


Private Show

by sevenfists



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Feelings, M/M, Podfic Available, Porn, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 23:40:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13669722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfists/pseuds/sevenfists
Summary: It was hot, and Sid felt kind of weird about thinking it was hot. This guy was screwing himself on camera for money. That wasn’t really Sid’s scene.He closed the browser window. Fine for other people, but not his thing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago for some friends, serialized it on Tumblr, and am now posting it here in its entirety. Thanks to everyone who cheered this along on Tumblr -- I had a lot of fun posting it that way!
> 
> This is not intended as an accurate representation of camming and is in general pretty silly. Also features panties, sex toys, and a tiny bit of breeding kink. Geno is 20 when the story begins and Sid is 29.

Sid learned about camming from one of the podcasts he listened to, a grab-bag show that covered a lot of different topics, everything from evolutionary biology to artisan baking to, well, sex work. They interviewed some people who worked as cammers, two women and a man, and Sid found it so fascinating that he didn’t even notice when the bus arrived at the hotel, and Tanger had to shake his shoulder to get him to snap out of it.

“The fuck were you listening to?” Tanger asked him, when Sid had finally grabbed his bags and disembarked.

“Just some podcast,” Sid said. 

“Ugh, don’t tell me about your nerd shit, I don’t care,” Tanger said.

The podcast had mentioned that there were a number of different camming sites, but only identified one by name. Sid looked it up that night in his room after dinner. He liked learning about new things, and he was curious about this. 

He loaded the website in incognito mode, because no tablet was safe around the team. His screen filled with thumbnails of naked women. He clicked on one essentially at random. A video loaded of a woman on her hands and knees, ass toward the camera, a pink toy peeking out. She shook her hips back and forth slowly. The right half of the screen was a chat feed. Sid watched for a few minutes. There was a debate going on about which was better, the woman’s pussy or her ass.

He went back to the main page and clicked on the tab to show men. This time he scrolled down the page, looking for a thumbnail that appealed to him. He picked a muscular guy wearing shorts. When the video loaded, the guy was slumped on a couch with one hand inside his shorts, staring blankly at the camera. It wasn’t hot.

Sid had never really understood the appeal of porn; it always seemed so artificial. One of his exes, a beta he had dated for a few months, liked to send him short videos of herself masturbating, and he’d been really into that because _she_ was into it. He’d thought that camming might be more like that, more of a personal touch, but so far the streamers mostly seemed bored.

He back-clicked again. There were a bunch of tabs at the top of the page: men, women, couples, alphas. He clicked on the tab for omegas and scrolled down idly, and then stopped and scrolled back up. There was a thumbnail of a guy lying on his stomach, showing the curve of a truly fantastic ass. 

He clicked. When the video loaded, the guy was kneeling on a bed, grinning, wearing a backwards baseball cap and nothing else, one hand holding his huge dick. “I already have it in! You want to see? Maybe you guys can tip me if you want to see it.” He had an accent, Eastern European or something.

He was cute: big smile, strong jaw, soft, hairless cheeks. Young, but not creepy young. Sid didn’t click out right away. There was a dildo on the bed, one of the realistic ones that was supposed to look like a real dick, complete with a flared head and molded veins. The guy picked it up and went down on it, expertly, deep-throating like it was no big deal. The viewers liked that, judging from the chat feed.

The guy pulled off the dildo with a wet pop. “Okay, I think you guys all want to see my plug, so here it is.” He turned around and went down on his hands and knees, showing off his ass, which was—Christ, even better than it had looked in the thumbnail. He was wearing a plug, and he reached back and pulled on the base until the fat bulb stretched his hole wide. Then he pushed it back in.

Sid scrolled down to look at the guy’s bio. His username was malychshake, but his bio listed his name as Geno, which Sid felt pretty certain was fake. His location was ‘Sitting on your knot.’ 

He knew his audience, that was for sure.

When Sid scrolled back up, Geno had taken out the plug and was up on his knees again, slowly sinking down onto the dildo and letting out sweet, breathy moans.

It was hot, and Sid felt kind of weird about thinking it was hot. This guy was screwing himself on camera for money. That wasn’t really Sid’s scene.

He closed the browser window. Fine for other people, but not his thing.

\+ + +

He was a little drunk when he logged on to the site again, at home after having Flower and Vero and the kids over for dinner. Vero always encouraged him to drink more wine than he probably should, and after they left he felt warm and flushed and a little bit horny, and that was his excuse for getting in bed and scrolling around the website on his tablet until he found Geno’s feed.

Geno was lying on his back with a pillow under his hips, three fingers buried in his ass, and from all appearances well on his way to an orgasm. His hand was a blur on the shaft of his dick, and his back was arched as he pushed down on his fingers. His knuckles were shiny with slick. His face, what Sid could see of it, was bright red and slack with pleasure.

He was moaning a whole lot.

Sid’s cock plumped in his sweatpants. He couldn’t help himself. Nothing about this seemed artificial, and Geno definitely didn’t seem bored. Maybe the moaning was a little over the top, but he wasn’t moaning because some guy was dicking him and he had to pretend to be into it. He was touching himself, probably exactly the way he liked it, and he was going to come, probably pretty soon.

**he’s really close** , said someone in the chat feed with the username of knottyfatty.

**You think he shoots up to his neck again?**

**such a fuckin slut i love how much u want dick**

Geno wailed something that didn’t sound like English, and Sid could see his hole clench around his fingers a moment before the first pulse of come hit his belly.

Sid gave up on any pretense that he was only watching and got his dick out of his pants.

Geno moaned incoherently, clamping down hard on his fingers as he stroked his cock until he was finished coming. He let go of his dick and started to fuck himself again with slow flexes of his wrist.

“Oh my God,” Geno said, “oh God, holy shit.” His knees butterflied together and out again. He had a dopey smile on his face.

Sid was mesmerized.

He jacked himself off without intent, just enjoying how it felt, as Geno came back down to earth, no doubt exaggerating how out of it he was. It was hot and effective, and Sid watched the chat screen fill up with praise and tips.

“Oh, man,” Geno said after a few minutes. He pulled his fingers out of his ass and sat up. His belly was streaked with come. He was flushed and grinning. “That was great, huh? Great for me, at least, I don’t know about you guys!”

**love your tight ass you get so wet**

**will u come again?**

Geno laughed. “Yeah, I’m not done tonight. Let’s play more.” He fished around in the sheets for a moment and produced a weirdly-shaped sex toy, molded white plastic with two curving tails at the base. He went up on his knees and worked the toy into his ass. “This one’s nice. I just squeeze and it hits me so good inside.”

**Geno when’s the last time you got fucked**

“Mm, couple of weeks ago,” Geno said. He brought both hands to his chest and pinched at his nipples. “I’m single, but I’ve got a good friend, she’s an omega, we help each other out. She’s got a big strap-on and she put me on my knees and nailed me until she felt like she was done.”

God. Sid couldn’t help it: he was thinking about what it would be like to fuck Geno, to put him on all fours and sink into the wet heat of his ass, and—

He closed the website, turned off his tablet, and worked his hand over his cock until he came.

\+ + +

He promised himself he wouldn’t do it again, but of course he did, and then a whole bunch of times after that. He created an account with the site, and bought tokens so he could tip Geno and get him to do stuff. Geno liked to suggest something mind-meltingly hot and then wait for a certain amount in tips before he would actually do it.

It wasn’t a big deal. It was a good way to blow off steam after a game. Sid got into the habit, more game nights than not, of coming home from the arena and checking to see if Geno was streaming. He was hot, and he had a cute personality, friendly and teasing. Sid liked listening to him talk.

The Penguins lost one night to the Rangers, not long before the start of the playoffs, a humiliating blowout of a game. Sid went home afterward and settled in the den with his laptop, desperate for a distraction. Geno was online and broadcasting, and Sid didn’t even bother with other cammers. Geno was the only one he wanted to watch.

The room was full and busy. Geno was popular. The chat scroll went by so fast that Sid didn’t usually try to keep up with it. Nobody ever said anything interesting, anyway, just compliments about Geno’s appearance and filth about how they wanted to knot him. 

Sid had come in late, as usual. The show was already in progress. Geno was on his back, his legs spread wide, rubbing at his hole. There was a dildo on the bed beside him. His dick was soft, so he had come at least once already. This was Sid’s favorite part: watching Geno tease himself back into arousal, holding off until he was flushed everywhere and wet and desperate for it.

Geno was laughing. “Guys, I know, I’m working on it! I’m twenty, not fifteen. Maybe I’m a little bit too old now, huh?”

The chat window erupted in outrage. **if youre old than im dead** , bigknot78 said, and bestalpha4u, one of the regulars, said, **we’ll wait for u all night baby take ur time**.

Geno grinned and pushed his thumb against his hole. Sid watched, rapt, as the tip sunk inside. “Thanks, bestalpha. I don’t think it’s too long now. Maybe you guys tip me, tell me what you like me to do.”

Fuck. Sid tipped him a bunch of tokens and typed, **I want you to fuck yourself with that dildo until you’re hard again**

Geno’s eyes moved to the side as he read the text, and then his face lit up. “Hey, grinder29, good to see you again.” He spread his legs a little further and pushed his thumb in all the way to the knuckle. “You like this dildo here, or should I get a different one?”

**That one’s perfect** , Sid typed, and then took his right hand off the keyboard so he could reach down and palm his half-chub through his sweatpants. He liked the anticipation, but Geno made it hard to hold off.

“Hmm, you think I’m wet enough?” Geno asked. He turned over onto his belly and reached back to spread his ass cheeks, baring his soft, shiny hole, pink and smeared with slick.

**u look wet enough 2 fuck**

**god I bet you smell amazing**

**I want to lick that right off you**

Sid had already forgotten about the game, Sully’s disappointment, the reporters’ pointed questions, and his own frustration. **You’re definitely wet enough** , he typed.

Geno glanced back at his computer screen to read their messages, and then he laughed. “Okay, maybe I’m ready.”

Jesus. Sid gave up and shoved his hand into his sweatpants as Geno turned onto his back again and rubbed the tip of the dildo against his hole, one arm hooked under his knee to hold his leg out of his way. He teased himself until someone sent him a few hundred tokens, and then he pushed slowly inside.

Sid knew that most of what Geno did on camera was for show. He wanted guys to tip him; of course he played up his reactions. But the moan he let out as the dildo slid into his ass was pretty fucking convincing, and his cock twitched in a way that Sid didn’t think could be faked.

_Jesus._

He stopped reading the chat scroll and just watched as Geno slowly fucked himself. His head was turned to one side on the pillow, his eyes closed, his full pink mouth hanging open. His eyebrows drew together whenever he hit a good spot. His cock filled and lengthened, stiffening up where it lay against his abdomen. Sid wanted to put him face-down and tongue the slick from his hole and knot him so hard he cried. Maybe Flower was right, and he needed to get laid more.

“Mmm,” Geno said, reaching down with his free hand to rub at his cock, hard now, and the foreskin pulling back to show the shiny head. “What do you think? Should I make myself come?”

Sid’s own dick was hard and hot in his hand. He didn’t want to come yet. He squeezed himself and watched as Geno laughed and said, “Okay, but I need a different toy for that.”

Geno slid the dildo out and squirmed around to lean over the side of the mattress, reaching down for the bin of toys he stored beneath the bed. The camera caught his ass in profile, the huge unbelievable curve of it, on par with the best asses Sid had seen in the locker room. God. Nobody got an ass like that without working out, and Sid wondered if Geno played a sport or just spent a ton of time in the gym. Soccer, maybe, with those long legs.

“Good, here we go,” Geno said, sitting up again. He had a new dildo in his hand, and Sid recognized this one from previous sessions: it vibrated. 

The chat window was blowing up. Sid didn’t care. Geno sat up against the headboard and palmed his dick against his abdomen. “You guys can see? It’s a good angle?” He bent his knees and planted his feet on the bed, spread wide, showing off his hole. 

Sid squeezed himself again and worked his hand down the shaft, down and back up, just once.

Geno pushed the dildo in. His head thunked back against the headboard. “Oh, God, it’s so good.” He shifted his hips a few times, pushing down onto the dildo, and then his fingers moved over the base as he pushed the button to turn on the vibrations.

The effect was immediate. His whole body twitched, and his hand squeezed around his cock. “Okay, oh God, okay,” he said, and took his hand off his dick, tucking it away behind his back. “No hands. How long you guys think it takes?”

Sid had watched Geno do this before, and he knew Geno could draw it out for ages, fucking himself with little shallow thrusts and squirming around and moaning. He typed out with his left hand, **come as fast as u can** , and sent Geno a big tip.

“I don’t think it takes long,” Geno said, and dragged the dildo out for the first thrust back in.

Watching Geno make himself come lit up every part of Sid’s body. He liked to imagine that he could see the moment when Geno stopped performing and gave himself over to the selfish, single-minded pursuit of his own pleasure. Geno’s face and chest got all blotchy, and he held the dildo in place, probably vibrating right against his prostate, and worked his hips steadily. He stopped moaning when he got close, and Sid loved that, because he didn’t mind the theatrics but what really got him going was Geno’s unfeigned enjoyment.

“Ah, oh God!” Geno cried out, and came trembling, his dick untouched, shaking and twisting on the bed as he fucked himself through it.

**fuckin nice**

**I just came too**

**baby gimme your number and you can come on my knot instead of that piece of plastic**

“Whew,” Geno said. He carefully slid the dildo out and tossed it on the rumpled sheets beside him. “I think that’s it for me tonight, guys. I came so fucking hard.” He grinned and ran his tongue along his lower lip. “Maybe it’s time for a heat soon, what do you think?”

That was the last straw for Sid. He set his laptop aside and shoved both hands down his sweatpants, one hand gripping the base where his knot was starting to swell and the other stroking the head and shaft. He brought himself off hard, in a swift blinding rush, and only barely managed to snag a tissue from the box on the end table to keep himself from making a mess all over his pants.

He slumped down on the sofa, breathing hard, and pulled his computer back onto his lap. Geno was sprawled out, playing lazily with his hole, and chatting with his captivated audience. “It’s finals soon, and my stats course is too hard. I go to tutoring every week, but I don’t know, guys. It’s really hard!” 

All of Geno’s streams ended like this, with a few minutes of idle conversation. Sid couldn’t get enough of it. He felt a little weird about being so fascinated by a university student’s exploits, but he’d never been to university, and Geno was really charming and engaging the way he talked about it. He wanted to be a physical therapist, and he was open about camming to pay for school. Sid liked listening to him talk about his coursework and his friends and the parties he went to.

“Okay,” Geno said at last, yawning. It was past midnight. “It’s bedtime for me. Maybe I’ll dream about one of you, okay? Don’t forget to follow me on Snapchat, username is same as here.” He winked at the camera, and after a last flurry of tips, ended the stream.

Sid went upstairs to bed, relaxed and satisfied. He didn’t think about the game at all, and he fell immediately into a deep and peaceful sleep.

\+ + +

The Penguins were out of the playoffs a month later, knocked out by the Capitals in the second round. They had won the Cup the year before, and nobody really expected them to do it twice in a row, but Sid had—not _expected_ it, but hoped, certainly. He went home after the game feeling hollowed out and emotionless: not sad, not angry, just scraped clean.

He took his laptop upstairs and brushed his teeth and got in bed. Geno was streaming, and for once it looked like Sid wasn’t coming in particularly late. Geno was still partially dressed, in a pair of very small athletic shorts that made his legs look even longer than usual. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed and scowling at the camera.

“I know the Capitals are a good team,” he said, “but so what? I want my team to win every year, you know?”

Sid’s scalp prickled. Was he—

“Pens are the best team,” Geno said. “So of course I’m sad when they lose. No more hockey for me now until October, you know? That’s five months! It’s too long.”

**Caps suck sorry you’re mad**

**i hate the pens but i love u geno ;)**

**if I was there I’d eat you out until you’re not sad anymore**

Sid didn’t let himself think about what he was doing. He typed, **Who’s your favorite player?**

“My favorite player? Definitely Crosby,” Geno said, the most thrilling five words Sid had ever heard. Geno grinned. “My friends say it’s because he’s a hot alpha and I want to sit on his knot. Okay, it’s true, but he’s not my favorite for that, it’s because he’s the best at hockey.” He reached down and cupped himself through his shorts. “Puck protection, playmaking, his backhand—it’s so good. Plus maybe he’s got a big knot, who knows?”

Jesus Christ. Sid was hard already, thinking about Geno watching him play—watching _him_ , thinking about his dick, wanting to—Jesus, sit on his knot. Sid would absolutely let him, drag Geno down and grind into him, fill his ass with come—

On the screen, Geno was wiggling out of his shorts, showing off his balls and the waxed skin of his taint. “I keep slicking up, I had to change my underwear two times today. And I’m wet again now, see?” He dipped his fingers between his cheeks and held up his hand for the camera. Sid wanted to suck his fingers clean. “I need a heat soon. Finals end this week, so I think next week I’ll do my heat.” He smelled his fingers and licked them. “Maybe I’ll film during heat, if you guys want.”

The chat went nuclear. Sid ignored it, staring dumbly at the screen, where Geno was sitting on the edge of the bed with one foot up on the mattress, stroking his hole and grinning. The thought of getting to watch Geno shiver and fuck himself through his heat had short-circuited Sid’s brain.

“It’s ticket show, so you have to pay to watch,” Geno was saying. “I think that’s fair, because heat’s private, you know?” He stood up and went around the side of the bed to his toy bin, and tossed a few knotting toys on the bed. “Here’s what I’ve got now. If you want me to use other stuff, you can send money and post the link in chat, and I’ll buy it.”

Sid’s hands shook as he typed, **I want you to buy a Crosby jersey. Authentic. And wear it while you’re in heat.**

Geno laughed. “You like Crosby too, grinder? Or maybe you want to pretend you’re Crosby and watch me come in your sweater.” His eyes dipped down, and he pushed his two middle fingers into his ass. “You send me the money, and I’ll buy it.”

Sid smashed the tip button immediately.

A few days later, he got a notification that Geno had posted a video, which was a little out of the ordinary; Geno only streamed live. It was a short video, under a minute. Geno grinned at the camera and waved, and said, “I got mail today! All the stuff I ordered for my heat. So I’ll unbox tonight, like on YouTube. 8PM Eastern, see you guys then!”

Sid was still in Pittsburgh, doing a little bit of media stuff to wrap up the end of the season before he flew out to LA for a few weeks. He was distracted all fucking day thinking about getting to see Geno that night—getting to watch Geno holding his jersey. 

“You okay, Sid? Getting sick?” Jen asked him, when they were supposed to be going over interview requests for the summer and Sid kept staring off blankly into the distance.

“Fine,” Sid said. “Long season. You know.”

It _had_ been a long season, but the real issue was Geno. Sid did a light workout, went home and lay out by the pool for a while, made dinner, and the whole time he was buzzing with anticipation, thinking about Geno’s sweet open smile, his long lanky body, the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck. Sid wasn’t one of those guys who was obsessed with omegas, he’d fucked plenty of betas and even a few alphas and had a great time with all of them, but he was starting to feel pretty obsessed with Geno.

Finally the appointed hour rolled around. Sid put his laptop on the coffee table in the den so he had both hands free. His dick felt heavy and swollen. He’d thought about jerking off earlier, just to take the edge off, but he held off, and now he was kind of regretting it, because he wanted to be able to enjoy every moment instead of being distracted by his erection.

Promptly at 8PM, Geno’s stream started up. He stood naked in front of the camera, his hard dick pointing toward his navel. He grinned at the camera, waved, turned to the side and slapped his ass. It jiggled impressively. “Hi guys, I’m so horny. I stopped suppressants for my heat, and I just think about sex all the time, you know? So I hope it’s okay if I get off before I open boxes.”

The chat scroll provided its unanimous approval. Geno fucked himself on a fat purple dildo suction-cupped to his headboard. Sid didn’t think he had been exaggerating his horniness at all, because he just went for it: not teasing himself or the audience, not drawing it out, just rolling his hips and tugging at his cock until his eyes squeezed shut and his neck arched and he came.

He looked a little sheepish when he pulled off and sat up. “Sorry, guys. Maybe I went off too fast. I just need to come a lot, you know?”

**that’s so fucking hot don’t apologize**

**how much u think u can come tonite?**

Geno scrubbed a hand through his hair and grinned. “I don’t know, three times, maybe four? We’ll find out, okay? But right now I’ll open packages.”

He had three boxes, and he lined them upon the bed and brandished a box cutter. “Smallest one first, okay?”

The smallest box held a single sex toy. Sid couldn’t even tell what it was at first, but Geno flipped it open to show off the textured interior, and then closed it again and turned it around to show the orifice at one end. “It’s like a Fleshlight, but I think better. Nice for my dick when I get sore from heat, you know? I’m excited to try this! Thanks to cummachine06 for this one!”

The second box had a variety of knotting toys and dildos. Geno cooed over each of them and thanked the purchasers by name. “This one’s so big, I can’t wait to have this in my ass!”

At last he opened the largest box: the one with Sid’s jersey. Sid squeezed his dick and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. He didn’t know why he was so worked up about this, but he felt like he was going to explode out of his skin. Geno sliced through the tape, folded back the cardboard flaps, and lifted the jersey from the box.

Sid’s breath caught and held. Geno held up the jersey, obscuring his face. When he lowered it again, he was smiling. “Thanks to grinder29 for this. Crosby’s my favorite player, but jerseys are so expensive, you know? But now I have a jersey.” His tongue poked at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe you want me to put it on?”

Sid pulled his cock out of his shorts so he wouldn’t leak pre-come all over the inside. He leaned forward and typed, **Please put it on. You’ll look so fucking good in it**

Geno read the message and grinned. “Okay, I hope it fits.” He pulled it over his head and shoved his arms through the sleeves. “How does it look?” he asked, with the C on his chest.

**Fantastic** , Sid managed to type, and then sat back and worked himself furiously until his knot swelled and he came into his cupped hand.

When the roaring in his ears faded, he sat up and grabbed a couple of tissues to clean up. Geno was still wearing the jersey, hiked up to his armpits while he lay on his back and played with his hole. He looked so fucking good. 

Sid was a goner. He was obsessed with this omega a decade younger than him who he would never meet. He didn’t even know where Geno lived. Somewhere on the East Coast, that was clear from things he’d said, but he never mentioned a city or even a state. 

Sid opened a private message to Geno. **Please ship me the jersey after your heat. The messier the better. I’ll pay.** Maybe it was an embarrassing thing to want, but what was the harm? He would have Geno ship it to Pat’s office in LA, where he had promotional stuff sent sometimes, and nobody would ever know. And God, he wanted it. The smell of Geno’s heat on the fabric. The imaginary lingering warmth of Geno’s body.

He was pretty sure Geno didn’t read private messages while he streamed; he rarely touched his computer, and mostly responded to people aloud. Sid watched the rest of the stream, even though he wasn’t going to get hard again. Geno jerked himself off for a long time and then came with two fingers shoved in his ass, and then he fucked himself on the purple dildo again before he called it quits for the night.

“Follow me on Snapchat!” Geno said. “My heat starts Friday night, maybe Saturday morning. I don’t know if I’ll stream the whole time, depends how I feel. I hope some of you guys will keep me company!”

**can’t fucking wait**

**You’re the best streamer on this site Geno**

Sid lingered online for a few minutes after the stream ended, hoping he would hear from Geno. He wasn’t disappointed. A private message popped up with an icon of Geno’s smiling face. **You tipped way too much for the jersey, so I’m happy to send. Give me your address and I send to you! How messy you want it? ;)**

Jesus Christ. **Soaked** , Sid typed, and gave Geno the address.

\+ + +

He flew out to LA a couple of days after that, and he was in LA on Friday, when Geno had said he might go into heat. Sid had dinner plans with friends, and was pretty sure he managed to act like a normal person and carry on a coherent conversation. He didn’t even beg off early; he stuck it out until the bitter end. But when he got back to the condo he was renting, he dropped his shit on the kitchen counter and immediately opened up his laptop.

Geno wasn’t streaming. Sid exhaled slowly, disappointed. Well: tomorrow, in that case.

He had deliberately not planned anything for Saturday. The season was over, Andy wanted him to take a month off from training aside from a little bit of light cardio and mobility work, and if he wanted to spend all day lying on the couch watching Geno try out his new knotting toys, well—he was on vacation, and the whole point of vacation was to do whatever the fuck he wanted.

Still, he forced himself to take a shower and eat breakfast before he opened his computer. Geno was live, and Sid waited impatiently for the server to connect. He had to buy a ticket for the hidden cam show, and wait for the video to load. And then it did, and Geno was there, splayed on his bed, naked, gleaming with sweat, his hair curling at his forehead, one hand tucked between his thighs, gripping the base of a toy.

Geno was moaning steadily. His toes curled against the mattress. He was visibly, obviously in heat, and Sid felt so overwhelmed that he had to look away from the screen for a moment. He could imagine what Geno smelled like—what the entire room smelled like, drenched in Geno’s heat.

As he watched, Geno shuddered around the toy in his ass, and his cock twitched hard, pulsing come across his belly. He was freshly in heat, then; he would come dry, later, toward the end of it.

Geno took his hand away, and Sid could see the base of the toy, a broad, flat square of silicone. A knotting plug, probably, and he thought he was right when Geno sat up and rocked his hips against the mattress a few times, grinding down on the pressure inside him.

“Okay,” Geno said. He shook his head vigorously, raked his damp hair out of his eyes, and grinned. “Wow, I feel great. I need a snack, I need—where is it?” He stumbled off the bed and disappeared from the frame, moving a little awkwardly with the toy still lodged in his ass. He was back a moment later, holding a granola bar or something. He leaned down in front of the camera, probably looking at his computer screen. “Who’s here? Wow, hi guys, lots of you. Hi martian, hi—oh!” He grinned. “I forgot about—where is it?” He took a bite of the bar and disappeared again. He was cute like this, all hyper and distracted from his heat. He needed someone to hold him down and keep him there, make him settle, and Sid knew it was a bad idea to think about how much he wanted to be that person.

When Geno came back into view, the bar was gone, and he was wearing Sid’s jersey.

“Holy shit,” Sid said aloud.

“See, grinder?” Geno said. “I promised I wear it.” He brought his hands to his chest, pinching his nipples through the fabric of the sweater, and moaned loudly. “I need—oh God.” He climbed onto the bed again and spread his knees wide, bracing his hands on the blankets to grind down on the mattress, probably rocking the toy inside of him. His hard cock peeked out from beneath the hem of the jersey. The fabric was going to _reek_ of him. Sid cupped his balls and watched Geno come on the artificial knot in his ass, spurting semen onto the gold band at the bottom of the jersey.

“Oh, I made a mess,” Geno said, panting, and then looked directly at the camera, heavy-lidded, and added, “Probably you like that, though.”

Sid for sure fucking did.

Geno fell deeper into heat over the next hour, and for a while he seemed to forget he had an audience, mindlessly fucking himself with a dildo and then working in a knotting toy when he wanted that. He didn’t respond to people’s comments the way he usually did, entirely focused on his own pleasure. He kept Sid’s jersey on through a few orgasms, and Sid could imagine what it was going to smell like, was already envisioning opening the package and pulling out the ruined jersey, drenched in Geno’s scent.

“Ah, shit,” Geno said at last, and turned over shakily onto his hands and knees, and sat up. He stripped off the jersey and pulled the knotting toy out of his ass. Then he climbed off the bed, and his knees buckled and he sank to the floor.

Sid had been lying on the couch, idly touching himself through his shorts, but he sat up now, his heart racing, and watched the chat scroll fill with concern.

**Geno u ok**

**shit someone call 911 maybe**

Geno’s head appeared as he sat up. “I’m okay, sorry guys. Maybe I don’t drink enough. But it’s okay.” He pushed himself to his feet, using the mattress as leverage, and he stayed up that time. Sid waited, tense, like there was anything he could do about it, all the way on the other side of the country and with no idea where Geno even was. But Geno moved off-screen and came back with a bottle of water and another mystery bar, and he sat on the bed to eat.

**drink another bottle of water and you should eat something that’s real food**

**PM me ur address and ill send u pizza delivery**

Sid was weirdly touched to see the apparently genuine worry from the other losers who were gathered to watch Geno fuck himself on camera. Geno shouldn’t be alone for this. He needed someone to take care of him. It was stupid of him to do this alone just for the money.

“Thanks, guys, I have real food, though,” Geno said. “I just need to eat.” He shook his head and smiled. “Sometimes it’s hard during heat, you know, to think about this stuff.” He crammed the last bite of the bar in his mouth and disappeared again, and when he returned to the bed he had a bottle of Gatorade and a sandwich. He sat down right on top of Sid’s jersey, draped over the foot of the bed, and shifted his hips around, settling in. _Soaked_ , Sid had told him, and it would be.

“I need to come again soon,” Geno said. He parted his legs to show them his dick, half-hard, and the sheen of slick coating his groin and inner thighs. He unscrewed the cap on the Gatorade and chugged half the bottle, his head tilted back, baring the long line of his throat. Sid wanted to lick his pulse point and then bite. 

Geno ate his sandwich, and finished the rest of the Gatorade, and then he lay on his back and slid the dildo into his dripping hole—the same one he’d been using all along, with a smoothly hooked tip. Sid was really into the idea that they were seeing Geno’s favorite toy, the one he used not because some guy had asked him to buy it but because it felt good and he wanted it.

Geno fucked himself through two swift, hard orgasms, and then he carefully worked a knotting plug into his ass and turned onto his side, curled on top of Sid’s jersey. “I need to sleep for a while,” he said, “but maybe I’ll see you guys when I wake up.” He wiggled his fingers at the camera in a flirtatious wave, and closed his eyes.

Sid had been hard for an entire geologic age, and he finally gave in and jerked himself off inside his shorts. His orgasm left him gasping on the couch. Even without smelling Geno, Sid wanted very badly to knot him, and it would take a few days to work that urge out of his system. He hadn’t expected his instincts to be so powerfully triggered by watching Geno on camera. It was inconvenient, but there was nothing he could do about it now except ride it out.

He forced himself to leave the house for a while. Geno was safe: he was sleeping. And he wasn’t Sid’s, anyway. Sid went out for lunch, and bought a few groceries, and by the time he got back to the house, Geno was awake, flushed, grinning, and riding a toy with great enthusiasm.

Sid knotted his fist, left Geno a tip that even he had to admit was excessive, and shut down his computer. This was getting out of hand.

\+ + +

He stayed away for almost a week, and it wasn’t even too difficult, which made him feel better. He wasn’t, like, _addicted_. He went out with his friends, worked out a little, hiked in the canyons, and for the most part thought about Geno only when he jerked off.

Then he got a call from Pat’s office that he’d received a package, and the ten-minute drive home after he picked it up was the longest of his life.

He ripped the package open as soon as he got in the door. The smell hit him at once: the rich, musky scent of an omega in heat. 

Sid sank to his knees in the entryway and fumbled the jersey out of the mailing envelope. The fabric was stiff with dried slick, and there were a few come stains on the bottom, near the hem. Sid tore his fly open, buried his face in the jersey, and brought himself off in about thirty seconds.

When he had calmed down and cleaned up, he took the package and the jersey into the kitchen. There was a note in the envelope that he had missed the first time around: handwritten, in the same messy dude handwriting that was scrawled on the back of the package. _Dear grinder29_ , it began, and Sid had to cover his eyes with his hand for a moment, because Geno had written this, and sent it to him.

_Dear grinder29, Thanks for the jersey and watching my show so much. I always like to see your name in the chat. I hope you follow me on Snapchat! I like to send my regulars some special things. Enjoy the jersey, I made it extra messy just for you. :)_

Extra messy. He wasn’t kidding. Now that the first crushing wave of lust had subsided, Sid could detect the subtler notes in Geno’s scent, the happiness and satisfaction underlying the arousal. He had been enjoying himself, squirming around on top of the jersey.

God. Sid carefully folded the jersey and put it back in the envelope, along with the note. He planned to enjoy it every night until the last traces of Geno’s scent faded. 

Then he went to sit on the couch and unlocked his phone. He knew what Snapchat was, of course—he wasn’t a total out-of-touch loser—but he had never used it. It couldn’t be that hard, though, and he if really got stuck, he could ask Taylor for help—although she would ask him a lot of nosy questions, and Sid absolutely wasn’t going to admit that he wanted to get on Snapchat to follow a camboy. He would have to figure it out on his own.

The interface was kind of confusing, but he made an account and added Geno, who was registered as malychshake, the same name he used for streaming. He swiped around the app for a little while. Geno had posted a short video: he was outside somewhere, wearing sunglasses and a backwards cap, drinking something through a straw, and then he slid the sunglasses up on top of his head and winked at the camera. It was pretty devastating. 

Sid watched it a few times, and then startled guiltily when he got a message—from Geno, and he opened it with a pounding heart. **I see you watch my story ;) glad you added me! hope you got the jersey!**

**Thanks, I got it** , Sid sent, and then, since there was no reason he couldn’t say exactly what he wanted to, **I jerked off as soon as I opened the package. You smell amazing**

The app did—something, and Sid tapped at the screen until a picture appeared: Geno with a crown of flowers on his head, sticking his tongue out at the camera. The caption read, **thanks grinder glad I made you happy!!!**

He was way too cute. Sid closed out of the app before he could do anything stupid.

Checking Snapchat became part of his morning routine. He would open it up before he got out of bed in the morning and see what Geno had posted in the last day. He would post stories about when he was going to stream next, and short videos of him going about his daily life, sweaty at the gym or hanging out at a coffee shop. It was all clearly calculated to make him seem friendly and approachable without actually revealing anything meaningful about his life, but Sid got sucked into it anyway. He liked watching Geno grin at the camera before taking a huge bite of a cupcake, leaving frosting smeared on his nose.

The best part, though, was the snaps Geno would send to a small group of followers—his regulars, Sid figured out pretty quickly; his big tippers. The stories were all squeaky-clean and safe for public consumption, but the snaps were filthy, Geno sucking on his own fingers, Geno’s soft dick smeared with come, a shot of a dildo suction-cupped to the wall in the shower with the caption, **had a great ride to start my morning!**

He still hadn’t been back to watch Geno stream, and about a week after he started following Geno on Snapchat, Geno sent him a message that said, **miss you in my room, maybe you don’t like to watch me anymore?**

Christ. **Sorry. I’m on vacation. Kind of out of my normal routine**

**maybe now you have my jersey, you don’t need the real thing anymore ;P**

Geno was going to destroy him. **I’ll watch tonight. I’ll smell your jersey while I watch you come**

**you turn me on** , Geno replied, which was obviously camboy bullshit but made Sid’s pulse race anyway, and then, **send me a snap of your knot, I want to see**

**Tonight** , Sid replied, and forced himself to get out of bed. He was thoroughly hooked and getting reeled in fast, and he was having way too much fun to stop.

He watched Geno stream that night, the jersey crumpled in one hand and his other hand on his dick as Geno flirted with the camera and used a vibrator on his balls and perineum. His smile was warm and genuine as he said, “Hey, grinder29! So happy to see you here!” Sid knew it was fake, but it was really goddamn effective. He sent Geno a huge tip.

When his knot began to swell, he held his dick away from his body and took a careful shot that showed his dick and a little bit of his stomach and thighs and nothing else. He sent it directly to Geno as a snap. Then he crushed the jersey against his face and breathed in Geno’s scent as he brought himself over the edge.

He checked Snapchat in the morning. Geno had screenshotted his snap and sent him a bunch of messages: at first an incoherent stream of exclamation points and emojis, and then a bunch of flattering bullshit: **best knot I ever see** and **so fucking big, I know you’d feel so good in my ass** and **I want to come on your dick**.

**Glad you liked it** , Sid sent. He didn’t believe a word of it, but Geno’s enthusiasm was sweet.

A new snap popped up, sent exclusively to him. Geno was lying in bed, shirtless, smirking at the camera. It was followed immediately by another snap, Geno’s hand wrapped around his huge, hard cock. The caption said, **thinking about your knot right now**

Sid got hard so fast his head spun. He rubbed the heel of his hand along his dick and replayed the snap. Geno had big hands and long fingers and Sid knew what he smelled like. He wanted to hold Geno open and taste him. He probably tasted so fucking good.

Sid drew his knees up and planted his feet on the bed, and took a shot of his dick and thighs and sent it to Geno. **I’m thinking about your ass**

This time Geno sent a short video of his hand stroking his cock. **you let me ride your knot, I know I’d come so hard**

Jesus Christ. Sid rolled over, wrapped his hand around his dick, and worked his hips roughly into his own fist. Geno was perfect, his fat ass, his skinny legs, the way he flirted and teased, the perfect fucking smell of him, better than any other omega Sid had fucked or scented in passing in public. He wanted to hold Geno down and shove his knot in and listen to him wail.

Right before he tipped over into orgasm, he turned onto his back to milk out his come in hard spurts across his stomach. He took a short video: his heaving belly, his softening dick, the wet gleam of his come. He watched it twice to make sure it didn’t contain anything that could identify him. Then he sent it to Geno.

The response was a shaky few seconds of Geno’s hand working fast over his cock as he cried out and came.

Sid stared up at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure what had just happened, or how he should feel about it.

His phone vibrated with a new message. **nice way for me to wake up ;)**

**Same for me** , Sid replied. **You’re so fucking hot**

**I do private shows, you know. any night I’m not streaming. if you ever want to, just let me know, we set something up :)**

It was incredibly tempting, and probably an incredibly bad idea, and Sid already knew he was going to do it. **I’ll think about it**

**no pressure, I won’t bring it up again. but if you ever want to, just ask :)**

Wanting wasn’t the issue. **I’ll think about it** , he said again, and added a smiley face just like Geno’s.

\+ + +

He and Geno snapped back and forth over the next couple of weeks, maybe kind of a lot. Geno still posted his tame stories, and sent raunchy snaps to his regulars, but he also sent Sid a lot of pictures, and some of them were sexy—a shot of Geno’s ass in the mirror, a picture of four or five butt plugs lined up on his dresser and the caption, **which one should I wear today?** But he also sent pictures of cute cats he saw in windows, or a fancy sandwich he ate.

Sid was charmed. His Snapchat usage increased from once a day to—well, whenever he saw a notification on his phone. He left LA and went home to Nova Scotia, to his house on the lake, and he sent Geno pictures of the sunset over the water, and a huge pickerel he caught. 

**show me your knot again** , Geno messaged him one night, when they had been bullshitting back and forth for a few hours about nothing in particular while Sid made dinner and watched TV. **so I can screenshot, okay? is that okay?**

Sid’s face went hot. **You can find plenty of pictures of knots on the internet, you know**

**but yours is best** , Geno said, and sent a picture of his face, sad and pleading. **please?**

**Okay, hang on** , Sid said, and went upstairs to get the jersey out of his bedside table. Nothing else got his knot up so fast. The scent was fading, but if Sid wadded up the fabric and buried his nose in it, he could still get the full rich odor. That was all he needed to get hard, and after a few deep breaths his knot began to swell, his body reacting helplessly to Geno’s scent.

Geno messaged him again. **you ready? you making your knot for me?**

**The jersey still smells like you. It gets me up pretty fast**. Sid held out his phone to take a picture of his torso from above, aimed down at the thick knot at the base of his dick. He scrutinized the image. It looked fine: his chest, his stomach, nothing identifying. It showed off his knot well enough. He sent it to Geno.

Geno screenshotted the image immediately, and then sent Sid a message that was nothing but eggplant emojis.

**Was that one good enough?** Sid asked.

**fucking beautiful but send me another to be safe**

Sid rolled his eyes, but he went into the washroom and snapped another picture in the mirror, his head carefully out of frame. **How’s that?**

Geno screenshotted that one, too. **can’t believe how hot you are, oh my god. perfect knot and your body looks like that? what the fuck**

It was only a regular sort of body. Geno was really prone to hyperbole. **Glad you liked it.**

**I’m getting wet looking at you** , Geno said, and then sent a picture of his hand, two of his fingers shiny with—fuck, with his own slick, and things snowballed pretty fast after that.

After Sid came, and was lying on his back in bed feeling his entire body throb in time with his pulse, he messaged Geno: **You said you don’t have a Crosby jersey, and I bought you one and then took it away from you again. I want you to get another one that you can have to keep. I’ll send you the money**

Geno sent him a bunch of ridiculous emojis, which made Sid grin at his phone, and then said, **you’re so good to me grinder, you take such good care of me**

Sid swallowed hard. Geno knew what alphas were like, that was all. He was deliberately pushing Sid’s buttons. But knowing that he was being manipulated didn’t make it any less effective. He would send Geno the money for ten jerseys, he would cover his rent for an entire year, he would fly him to the goddamn moon as long as he kept stroking Sid’s ego like that.

**I do what I can** , he said, instead of telling Geno to drop out of school, move to Pittsburgh, and spend the rest of his life lying naked on Sid’s couch, which was all he really wanted in the moment.

\+ + +

The next time Geno streamed, a couple of days later, he was wearing a pair of frilly black panties.

“You guys like?” Geno asked, posing for the camera, bending over and sliding down the waistband to show a tantalizing peek of his ass. “I’m not sure what I think, is it sexy?”

**are you out of your mind, of course it is**

**i want u come inside those and send them to me**

Geno laughed. He turned around again, one hand cupped around the soft bulge of his cock. “I should come in them? Won’t that be messy?”

God, he was such a tease, he knew exactly what he was doing. Sid was desperate for Geno to send the panties to _him_ , but he wasn’t going to ask now that some other guy had. He didn’t want to think about anyone else getting to smell Geno like that.

“I got a whole bunch of these,” Geno said. He moved his fingers, massaging himself, getting himself hard. “Made special just for men. Women’s panties don’t have enough room, you know?” He grinned. “I have too much in the front and the back.”

Alone on the couch in his den, Sid groaned and rubbed at the base of his dick, right where his knot would swell.

“Panties aren’t really my kink, you know?” Geno went on. “But I thought maybe some of you guys would like it.”

**Definitely my kink holy fuck you look good**

**send them to me please geno i want to smell ur come**

“Okay, I’ll come in them, if that’s what you guys want,” Geno said, shrugging like it was no big deal. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and spread his legs, and he was definitely hard now, the thick line of his cock obscenely distending the fabric of the panties. “I’m getting wet. I think maybe I won’t be able to wear these again.”

Panties weren’t really Sid’s kink, either, but thinking about the lacy fabric all sticky with Geno’s come and slick, reeking with his arousal, made him feel like the skin was melting off his face. He would pay any amount of money to have that delivered to his mailbox.

“Mmm,” Geno said from Sid’s computer screen, his head tipping back, one hand down the front of the panties, stroking himself, and the other playing with his nipples. He was glorious. 

After he came, shuddering and thrusting his hips into his hand, he peeled down the soaked panties and showed the camera the wet mess of his crotch, the fabric and his softening dick and his neatly trimmed pubic hair all smeared with come. 

He dropped the panties on the mattress and grinned at the camera. “Nice, huh? Let me find—” He slid off the bed and crouched on the floor, rummaging through his toy bin. He produced a plug Sid recognized, black and nondescript, but it vibrated, and Geno used it often enough that Sid thought he really liked it. 

Geno stood up and raised one foot onto the bed to slide the plug into his ass. He made a show of it, of course, rocking it back and forth, taking his time, and then finally pushing it all the way in with a pleased moan.

“One minute, guys, this one vibrates but I have to turn it on with an app on my phone,” Geno said. He approached the camera and went mostly out of frame, only his arm and the left side of his body visible as he messed around with his phone.

Sid’s own phone buzzed, and he glanced at it automatically, and then did a double-take when he saw the Snapchat notification. Geno had messaged him: **I’ll send you panties if you want :) same address?**

On the screen, Geno was sprawling out on the bed, stretching his arms above his head with a satisfied wiggle. 

Sid hadn’t asked for the panties, and more than one other guy in the room had, and Geno was ignoring all of them and offering the panties to Sid. 

Probably those other guys didn’t tip so much. Geno seemed pretty savvy. He knew how to keep his regulars invested.

**Different address** , Sid typed, and after a moment’s thought gave Geno the address for the rink where he skated in the summer. They had a mailbox for him there, for fan mail. It wasn’t ideal, but he had communicated with Geno enough by now that he had started to trust him. He knew it was stupid. He didn’t really know anything about Geno, and he was definitely thinking with the head between his legs instead of the one between his ears, but he really wanted those fucking panties.

He didn’t get a response until much later, after Geno was finished streaming for the night and Sid was lying in bed with a book. He fumbled his phone off the nightstand when he heard it vibrate.

**I’ll ship tomorrow. not surprised you’re Canadian, you’re so nice :)**

Sid took a deep breath. There were a lot of paths he could take here. He could ignore Geno’s comment. He could say he was still on vacation, or traveling for work. He could tell him the truth, that he lived in the US for most of the year for work.

**Born and bred** , he typed eventually, and then added, **I can’t fucking wait, I hope you know that. You make me crazy**

**maybe send me a picture of your knot when you open the package ;)**

**I’ll send you video** , Sid messaged recklessly, because why not? Why shouldn’t he get what he wanted? He was being careful, or careful enough, at least. He had worked hard all season, and he was still working hard now, hitting the gym or the ice with Andy and Nate six times a week, so—why not? He could indulge himself a little, with Geno, who wanted nothing from Sid but his money. Sid was happy to provide.

\+ + +

He got the panties a few days later. Just like with the jersey, there was no return address on the package, but this time, after the frantic drive home and the spine-melting orgasm, it occurred to Sid to check the postmark.

The stamp read Homestead, PA—one of the suburbs near Pittsburgh.

Sid sat down at his kitchen table and tried to calm his racing heart. It was probably just a coincidence. Lots of people lived in Pittsburgh. What would Geno even be trying to do? He had lured Sid in, deliberately reached out to him—it didn’t make any sense. There was no way Geno knew. 

It was just a coincidence, he told himself firmly, but he was still cautious that evening when Geno messaged him: **you get panties yet?? the post office told me they would arrive today, but I’m not so sure**

**Yeah, I got them** , Sid replied. They were upstairs in the drawer of his nightstand, tucked in there with the jersey, and Sid had been distracted all evening thinking about how good they smelled and how hard he was going to get off before he went to sleep. It wasn’t quite as good as Geno’s heat scent, but it was better than anything else Sid had ever smelled in his life. **Not sure what to say, to be honest. I came really hard and I’m going to again**

**where’s my video???** Geno sent.

**Sorry, I forgot**. He hadn’t actually, but he felt weird about sending it now, when Geno was maybe in Pittsburgh, maybe close enough that Sid could—

Well, maybe he went to school somewhere else, and he would be gone by the time Sid returned to Pittsburgh in the fall.

Geno sent a bunch of sobbing emojis, and then, **maybe next time!!**

No attempts at blackmail. No demands for anything. Geno’s only motivation was to keep flattering Sid into giving him money.

**Maybe we can do a private show soon** , he sent. The messaging was great, but he wanted to see Geno’s face, as much as he could get.

**yes!!! whenever you want! even tonight!**

Tonight was too soon. Sid needed to work himself up to it. **Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow, if you aren’t busy**

**I’m not streaming so yes :) what time?**

They agreed on 8PM, and on the same per-minute rate that Geno had charged during his heat. Sid was distracted as fuck all through the next day, and he channeled it into his workout until Nate threatened to go home early if Sid didn’t chill out. 

“Sorry,” Sid said, and then beat Nate again in their next race without any remorse.

By 7:30, Sid was too jittery to do anything except pace around his house. He triple-checked that he had video disabled on the cam site, and even taped a piece of paper over the camera on his laptop, just to be safe. When it was finally time, he sat down on the sofa in his den and logged on.

Geno was online. Sid didn’t know why he was so nervous. He talked to Geno all the time. The nature of their relationship was completely unambiguous. They both knew exactly what was going to happen tonight. He was ridiculously nervous anyway.

He clicked the button for the private show. A new window popped up, and there was Geno’s smiling face, close to the camera and just for Sid. His familiar bedroom looked different than it usually did. The lighting was different: the soft glow of lamplight instead of the brighter glare of the lights Geno used for streaming. The bed was unmade, the covers shoved to one side. And Geno was fully dressed—or at least he was wearing a T-shirt; Sid couldn’t see the lower half of his body.

“Hi, grinder,” Geno said, and his voice was softer than usual. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Sid rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to work up some saliva. **Glad to be here** , he typed.

“We can do voice chat if you like,” Geno said, “but no pressure, it’s okay just to type.”

Sid hesitated. Geno was a Pens fan, so maybe he would recognize Sid’s voice—but that was kind of paranoid, wasn’t it? Who would recognize his voice? **Maybe next time**

“Oh, thinking about next time already, I like it,” Geno said, grinning. 

Sid rolled his eyes. Geno knew he was cute, and he knew Sid was a sucker for it. **Guess it depends how good you are this time**

“I’ll be _so_ good,” Geno said. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. “What do you want? I’ll do anything.”

**That’s a bold offer** , Sid typed.

“I want to make you happy,” Geno said, “and I don’t think you would ask me to do anything I don’t like.”

Sid was pretty vanilla, so that was probably a safe bet. **Tell me your favorite fantasy. A real one, not what you think I want to hear. Tell me what you think about when you jerk off when you’re alone**

Geno’s eyes moved, reading the message, and then he grinned. “How do you know it’s a real fantasy, though?”

**Please** , Sid typed. He swallowed. His mouth was so dry. **You know I’m into you. You don’t have to keep me interested. I’m so fucking interested. I hope you’ll tell me the truth**

Geno’s expression changed. He sat forward again, his grin softening into a smile. “Okay, grinder. I won’t lie to you, I promise.” He pulled his shirt over his head, revealing the pendants around his neck and his almost hairless chest. He stood up and shoved down the basketball shorts he was wearing and stepped out of them, naked, his soft dick hanging between his thighs. “Sorry I’m not hard yet. I was maybe a little excited earlier, had to jerk off to calm down.”

He was so full of shit. **That’s okay. I like watching you get hard**

Geno climbed on the bed and settled back against the pillows. He spread his legs wide, sucked two fingers into his mouth, and then reached down to rub over his hole. “My favorite fantasy—it’s just a fantasy, you know? I don’t want it to happen for real.”

Sid’s eyebrows went up. Maybe Geno _was_ actually going to tell him the truth. **For sure. That’s why it’s a fantasy**

“Right. Okay, so—sometimes I think, what if I’m out, maybe at a coffee shop, maybe at the grocery store, and I go into heat?” He tipped his head back and rested it against the headboard. His fingers dipped into his hole, and then pushed in a little deeper, like he was already wet—like maybe he hadn’t been bullshitting about jerking off earlier. “And heat’s so—you can’t wait, you need it right then. So maybe there’s an alpha there, and he knows I’m in heat, so—if I’m in a coffee shop, maybe he bends me over a chair and pulls down my pants and fucks me right there.”

Jesus. Sid slipped one hand inside his sweatpants. His dick was firming up, thinking about Geno wanting that, or—not necessarily wanting it, but liking the idea of it, the publicness, maybe the shame.

Geno opened his eyes and look at the camera again. “That’s only the first part.” He sunk his fingers in to the knuckles. His cock was half-hard, pointing straight out, brushing the side of his wrist. “He doesn’t knot me. He pulls out and comes on my ass. And then there’s another alpha, someone different, and he sees me there and he knows he can use me.” He drew out his fingers and pushed back in, and the microphone he used for streaming was good enough to pick up the wet sound of it.

Sid’s cock twitched. He leaned forward to type with one hand. **does he fuck you?**

Geno made a breathless noise, not quite a laugh. “Yeah, of course. And then—well, you know. I get fucked as much as I want, as long as I want it, and everyone can see me there, getting used by any alpha who wants a ride.” He was completely hard now, his cock drawn up tight against his belly.

**that’s a good fantasy** , Sid typed, which seemed inadequate, but he wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Would you fuck me?” Geno asked. “If you saw me in a coffee shop, and I needed it?”

**oh god of course I would** , Sid pecked out, and then he had to take his hand out of his pants because he really needed both hands to type. **I felt crazy for a few days after I watched you while you were in heat. I wanted to knot you so fucking bad. If I saw you in heat in public, I would want to take you home with me and give you everything you needed**

“Everything?” Geno asked, sly, wicked, tonguing at his lower lip.

Fuck it. **I kept thinking about how you shouldn’t be alone. You almost passed out, and I wanted to be there to take care of you**

Geno didn’t respond. His hand worked slowly between his legs. In the dim light of the room, Sid couldn’t entirely make out his expression.

**Sorry** , Sid typed. **That was crossing a line**

“No, it’s okay,” Geno said. He sighed, and slid out his fingers and wiped them on the sheets. “It’s just—always I’d like someone to be with me. And take care.”

**I’m sure you could find someone who would**. Alphas, betas, other omegas—surely Geno could have anyone he wanted.

Geno palmed his dick, pressing it against his stomach. “Maybe. But—” He broke off, and smiled brightly. “I talk too much. What do you like? I can wear panties again—”

**Tell me what you were going to say** , Sid typed. **Please. Only if you want to. But I’d like to know**

Geno sighed. “Grinder—”

**Sorry. Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked**. He was supposed to be watching Geno get off, not trying to get Geno to talk about his private life.

Geno sat up and scooted down to the end of the bed. He sat with his legs folded, his hands clasped loosely in his lap. “Heat makes good money,” he said quietly. “My parents—they support me, but they’re not rich, you know? College is expensive, and then I have more school for physical therapy, and—if I do heat with someone, I don’t get paid. So I’m alone, and I make good money.”

That was more or less what Sid had figured. He wanted to tell Geno that he should come to Pittsburgh for his next heat and sweat through it in Sid’s bed, or even that he would send Geno the same amount he usually made for streaming during heat so that he could have someone there with him and still get paid. But neither of those offers was safe or, probably, welcome. **You just need a really rich guy to pay you to go through your heat with him**

Geno grinned and scratched at his shoulder. “Maybe that’s illegal, I don’t know, you tell me.”

**I think it’s definitely illegal. Maybe you should give the coffee shop a go**

Geno laughed, which had been Sid’s intention. “Okay. I’ll think about it.” He straightened up and planted his hands on the mattress behind him, arching his back. “What can I give you tonight?”

Anything, everything. **Just make yourself come. However you want. I just want to watch you**

“However I want, hmm?” Geno said. He drew one knee up and rested his heel on the bed, showing Sid his dick and balls, not as hard as he had been but not all the way soft, either. “Anything?”

**Yeah** , Sid typed. His breath was coming a little faster.

“Good,” Geno said, and pushed two fingers into his ass.

\+ + +

He got a snap from Geno the next morning, while he was cleaning up in the kitchen after breakfast. Geno was smiling at the camera, his head tilted to the side, propped up on one fist. He looked sleep-rumpled and sweet. **morning, grinder** , the caption read, and Geno had drawn a few small hearts beside his face.

Sid realized he was grinning at his phone like a fool. He took a shot through the window above his kitchen sink: his back yard and the lake behind it. **Morning**

When he met Nate and Andy at the rink a few hours later, they greeted him with identical expressions of suspicion.

“What?” Sid asked.

“You look happy,” Nate said.

“Is that a crime? Are we going to skate or what?” Sid said, and Nate squinted at him for another moment before he shrugged and let it go.

Sid was probably making some relatively poor life choices, but Geno was a real source of delight for him. He looked forward to Geno’s snaps and messages; every time his phone buzzed, his heart lifted in his chest. His summers at home were always busy and fun, between spending time with his parents and Taylor, training with Nate, hanging out with friends, and lately running the hockey school. But this year, maybe more than in previous years, the guys he’d grown up with were busy with the families they were starting to have, wives and husbands and toddlers and new babies, and Sid spent more time fishing alone than he would have liked. But he didn’t feel so alone when he could send a picture to Geno and get a cute response, **is that how fish look in Canada, I didn’t realize so small** , stupid things that made Sid smile.

He thought a lot about their private show, and the way Geno had gone for it, no theatrics, no moaning, just his quiet uneven breathing as he brought himself off, the flex of his abs as he got close. He wanted to do it again. He thought about what Geno had said about voice chatting, and—maybe that would be okay. Probably even the most dedicated Pens fans didn’t spend that much time listening to him talk. Without the context of a face, Geno wouldn’t recognize his voice. It wasn’t like he was James Earl Jones or something. His voice wasn’t that distinctive.

He watched Geno’s next two streams, and it was different now, after doing the private show. He kept wanting to ask Geno questions and see Geno smile at the camera—at _him_. Specifically at him, and not at any of the other guys who came to watch his show. 

He felt weird about it. The second night, he exited out of the site early, after Geno’s first orgasm, and went upstairs to jerk off with Geno’s panties clutched in his fist, thinking about Geno’s flushed face, his soft, open mouth.

He woke in the morning to a few messages from Geno: **you left early tonight, I missed you ;)** and **hope you have a good day tomorrow!** and finally a picture of a cardboard box with something gold and black inside: the new jersey.

Sid didn’t reply right away. He ate breakfast and drove into town to train with Nate, and went for lunch with him afterward. Nate wanted to go into Halifax to buy a present for his cousin’s birthday, and for some reason this required Sid’s participation. Before they left the restaurant, Sid excused himself to the washroom and messaged Geno: **when can we do another private show?**

Geno replied while Sid and Nate were still in the car, and Sid tried to be subtle about pulling out his phone to check the message, but Nate caught him at it anyway.

“Who are you texting all the time?” he asked. “Are you screwing someone?”

“No,” Sid said. “It’s nobody,” which was a terrible response, because obviously it was _somebody_. “It’s just Flower.”

“Is it Flower, or is it nobody?” Nate asked, glancing over to give him a skeptical look. “You’re acting really shady, dude.”

“It’s Flower,” Sid said. Geno had written, **we can do tonight if you want! 8PM again?**

**Great** , Sid replied, and put away his phone before Nate’s expression could deteriorate any further.

He felt so nervous again, the same way he had the first time, all through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, as he made dinner and ate out on the patio. He taped over his webcam again. When it was time, he logged on to the sight of Geno’s smiling face, and he felt something ease inside his chest. It was only Geno.

“Hi, grinder!” Geno said, beaming. He was wearing Sid’s fucking jersey and his hair was all messed up. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like to do this again.” He drew up his shoulders and scrunched his nose and his mouth, somehow still smiling.

How was he so cute? Sid put his laptop on the coffee table and leaned forward to type. **Of course I wanted to. But I can’t take up all your time**

“Grinder,” Geno said, leaning closer to the camera, “you can have as much of my time as you want.”

That was probably true, as long as Sid was willing to pay for it. **Last time you mentioned voice chatting. Is that still something you want to do?**

Geno brightened even further. “You want to? Yeah, turn on your microphone, let’s chat.”

Sid took a deep breath, let it out, and activated the microphone on his laptop. “Uh, hi. Is this working?”

“Hi,” Geno said softly. “Say something else.”

“Uh, like what,” Sid said.

“Full name and credit card number,” Geno said, which startled a laugh out of Sid. Geno laughed, too, and said, “I like your voice. I like your laugh.”

“I like yours,” Sid said, and then cleared his throat, a little embarrassed. It was easier to type those things than to say them. “I see you, uh. You got the jersey.”

Geno sat up straight, grinning, and ran one hand down his chest, passing over the logo. “I thought I’d wear it for you. Do you like it?”

What a question. “Yeah. I like it a lot.”

“You like to pretend you’re Crosby, huh? See me in your jersey.” He turned his head slightly to one side and gave the camera a coy look. “Maybe you _are_ Crosby.”

He was joking. He didn’t believe what he was saying. It was a joke. Sid forced himself to unfreeze. “Ha. I wish. Every guy’s dream, eh?”

“Not _my_ dream,” Geno said. “I don’t want to be him. I want to fuck him. Or maybe play hockey with him.”

Sid swallowed. “You play hockey?”

“I wanted to play professional hockey, when I was a kid,” Geno said. “But I busted my knee, you know, when I was a teenager, before we moved to the US. I play with a beer league now, it’s fun.”

“I’m sorry you got injured,” Sid said. He had thought about that sometimes, when he was in the Q, about what would happen if he got hurt and had to stop playing, because then what would he do?

Geno shrugged. “It’s hard for a while, but I like what I’m doing now, you know? I have an internship this summer, you know, for PT, and it’s so great. Every day I look forward to it.” He laughed a little, and rubbed one hand over his face. “Sorry. I talk too much.”

“Don’t apologize,” Sid said. “I like to hear it. I’m interested.” God, he’d known Geno was a hockey fan, but knowing that he _played_ , that he had been really serious about it at one point—

“It’s boring,” Geno said decisively. He stood up and shimmied out of his shorts, and then he was bare from the waist down, wearing nothing but Sid’s jersey. “I got ready for you tonight. Look.” He turned around and bent over to show Sid the flat base of a plug between his asscheeks.

Sid’s whole body felt warm. He lay down on the sofa and turned onto his side to watch the computer screen. “How long have you had that in?”

“Few hours,” Geno said. He straightened up and grinned at the camera over his shoulder, hitching up the hem of the jersey to show off. The view of his ass was criminally good. 

“Is that because you like it or because you think it makes me hot?” It definitely made him hot. He reached down and cupped his dick and gave himself a gentle squeeze. He couldn’t wait to get off while he watched Geno.

“Maybe both,” Geno said, grinning wider. “I like getting fucked. I like playing with my ass. And I think you get turned on from how much I want it.”

“God, I really do,” Sid said. “Do you ever top?”

“Sometimes,” Geno said. He shoved the bedclothes aside and lay down, his legs spread wide, and eased the plug out of his ass with a careful twist. “Why, you want me to top you?”

Sid didn’t do that too often, but he had always enjoyed it when he did. “I’d take you for a spin. You’ve got a huge dick. Shame to waste that.”

Geno laughed. “It’s not wasted. It’s really important to me. How else would I make myself come?”

“Good point,” Sid said, feeling a little breathless from the sight of Geno’s slick hole and half-hard cock, the jersey rucked up around his waist to expose him to Sid’s eager gaze.

“What do you want?” Geno asked. He reached down to tease at his hole with his fingertips.

“Whatever you want,” Sid said. He was already pretty hard. “That’s what I like. When it seems like you’re really enjoying it, that’s when—yeah. I just want to see you get off.”

“I always enjoy it,” Geno said. His fingers rolled in slow circles. Sid couldn’t look away. “You think I don’t like sex?”

“I think there’s some stuff you do because the viewers like it, and maybe there’s some stuff you do when you’re alone that you never do on camera,” Sid said. He wouldn’t ask Geno to do those private things for him, but God, he was intensely curious, and he hoped that someday Geno would show him. 

“Maybe,” Geno said. He stared at the camera for a few moments, his expression unreadable, and then suddenly he rolled to one side and opened the drawer of his bedside table. When he rolled back, he had a dildo in his hand, and Sid recognized it as the one he’d used a lot while he was in heat. He felt weirdly triumphant that he’d guessed correctly about it being Geno’s favorite.

“You like that one, huh?” he asked. He shoved down the waistband of his shorts and got his dick out, teasing back the foreskin with his thumb. A single bead of clear liquid welled at the tip. He wiped it up and licked the thin salt from his skin.

“Feels good,” Geno said. “The curve’s good.” He tongued at his lip. “I always come hard with this one. Almost as good as a big alpha knot.”

Sid huffed. “Don’t do that. Don’t—you don’t have to tell me that bullshit. I know it’s fake.”

Geno threw the dildo down on the bed and sat up, scowling at the camera. “Why do you think it’s fake? Don’t I get to like things? You think it’s bullshit, you think I can’t _really_ like it—well, maybe I like bullshit! Don’t tell me it’s fake, what do you know?”

“Oh, uh,” Sid said, taken aback. “I didn’t mean—”

“Sorry,” Geno said. The light was dim, but Sid was pretty sure he was flushing. “I’m—sorry. I shouldn’t—”

“You _should_ ,” Sid said. “I was being an asshole. You can like whatever you want. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Geno said. They were both quiet for a few moments. Sid felt like he should say something else, but he didn’t know what. The mood had shifted. Maybe he had ruined it. He was about to tell Geno they should end the session and try again later, but then Geno settled back against the pillows and said, “You want to see what I like?”

Sid exhaled. “Yeah. If you still—I’d really like that.”

“Okay,” Geno said again. He dipped his hand between his legs, pushing at his hole, and then he reached for the nightstand again and fished out a bottle of lube. Sid watched as Geno slicked up the dildo and teased it against himself for a minute, his eyes falling shut, before he slowly pressed it inside.

“That’s good,” Sid said. He had softened up, but he gave himself a squeeze and felt his cock thicken in his grip. “How does it feel?”

“Good,” Geno said, without opening his eyes. “Now shh. You want me to do what I like, don’t make me answer questions.”

“Okay,” Sid said. “I’ll be good.”

Geno made a soft noise and spread his legs a little wider.

This time was even better than their first private show, although Sid couldn’t really pinpoint why. Geno had seemed pretty into it the first time, and he seemed into it again now, pushing his hips into every thrust of the dildo, and finally shoving the dildo in deep and holding it in place as he jacked his cock hard and fast until he groaned and let go. He kept his eyes closed the whole time, and Sid got to watch the unguarded play of expressions across his face, his eyes squeezing tight, his mouth opening, and finally the grimace as he came, somehow both stupid and hot.

Geno went limp against the pillows, panting. He wiped his messy hand against his thigh, carefully avoiding the hem of the jersey. “You come yet?”

“Not yet,” Sid said tightly. “I’m close.” He dragged his fist up the length of his dick and back down, and he was—yeah. He was close.

Geno slid the dildo slowly out of his ass, and then to Sid’s surprise pushed it back in. “How’s your knot?”

“Up,” Sid said. Up and swollen, God, he was going to go off so hard. He wished he had the panties with him, but if he closed his eyes he could almost taste Geno’s scent on the back of his tongue. “It’s—uh. It’s—”

“You’re too close,” Geno said. His voice sounded fond. Sid managed open his eyes again to watch Geno languidly fucking himself with the dildo. “Wish I could see you right now. You’re so hot. I look at your pictures a lot. Think about your knot. You like to fuck omegas? I think you do. I think you’d like to fuck me. And—” His voice dropped. “I’d let you.”

Sid’s back arched. He tightened his hand around his knot and felt every part of his body tense hard and then release all at once into orgasm.

“Good,” he heard Geno say, and he worked his hand over his cock to bring himself through it, shaking there alone on the couch, with Geno watching the camera and seeing nothing, only the blank space on his screen where Sid wasn’t. 

“That sounded like it was good,” Geno said. Sid reached blindly for the box of tissues on the side table above his head and cleaned off his hand and belly. When he looked at the laptop again, Geno was still playing with the dildo. Sid wondered if he liked getting fucked after he came. He probably did.

“Yeah, it was good,” he said. “Come on. You know it was. You’re—” Incredible, he wanted to say, but maybe that was too much. 

“Grinder,” Geno said. He chewed on his lip for a moment. Sid had never seen him look so uncertain. “Maybe—my name’s Evgeni. My friends call me Zhenya. It’s like a short name. So maybe you can call me Zhenya, if you’d like.”

“Zhenya,” Sid tried. Nobody was there to see the foolish grin that spread across his face. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

\+ + +

He stopped watching Geno stream, after that. It wasn’t satisfying at all anymore, not when he could have Geno in private shows instead—maybe not wholly the real Geno, but even Sid wasn’t cynical enough to think there wasn’t some element of the real guy in the man he messaged every day and watched orgasm three or four times a week.

“You don’t see my shows anymore,” Geno told him one night, with a little pout that was clearly intended to look cute. He’d probably practiced in the mirror. 

“Why should I?” Sid asked. “I’m getting everything I want right here. Pull your leg up a little higher, I can’t see.”

Geno groaned but did it, and there was the view Sid wanted, three of Geno’s fingers sinking into his stretched hole, all pink and wet. 

“That’s perfect,” Sid said. “How does it feel?”

“Good,” Geno said, turning his flushed face away from the camera, like he could possibly be shy.

A couple of days after that, Sid was reading a book in bed when he got a message from Geno: **doing a show and I’m thinking of you to get off**

A fierce, possessive pride flamed to life in Sid’s heart. He furiously stomped it out. Geno wasn’t his. Geno was still playing him, and he knew that, expected that, wasn’t mad about it, but he also didn’t want to let himself think it was anything more than it was. Geno seemed to like him, and Sid thought that was pretty genuine, but he also knew he was still a client. There were lines.

He snapped a picture of his hand holding the open book and sent it to Geno. **Better get back to work**

When he checked his phone in the morning, he had three snaps from Geno: the usual filthy good-morning snap to his regulars, and two directly to Sid, a picture of a bunch of sex toys lined up on the washroom sink, **I worked hard!!** , and a selfie of Geno in bed, lit by lamplight, with hearts drawn all over it.

Sid screenshotted that one, and then felt embarrassed, because Geno would see. Well, whatever. Geno knew he had Sid wrapped around his finger.

A few weeks went by. Sid trained, geared up for the hockey school, and spent most of his free time interacting with Geno. The sex never lost any of its appeal, but the other stuff they did—the messaging, the talking—started to be more and more appealing, until Sid had to admit that he looked forward to seeing Geno on his laptop screen more to hear about Geno’s day than to watch him get off.

Geno was funny and enthusiastic and full of interesting observations about the things he did and saw. He talked a lot about his friends, and now that Sid knew he lived in Pittsburgh, he recognized the city in Geno’s stories: the rivers, the hills, a drunk friend craving Primanti’s. Slowly, Geno’s stories began to include parents and an older brother, a dog, and Sid started to piece together a pretty clear idea of Geno’s life.

He let his own life slip a little into what he told Geno. He was careful, he didn’t provide any identifying details, but he told Geno about Taylor bringing her boyfriend home for the first time and their dad’s awkward attempt at showing how cool he was with everything. He talked about Nate crowing over the bass he caught off Sid’s dock until Sid reeled in an even bigger one. He sent a lot of pictures.

He probably wasn’t being all that careful. He had started to think of Geno as—certainly as a friend. It was so stupid. But Geno was the best part of his day, a lot of the time, and Sid had a good and fulfilling life, so the bar for that was set pretty high.

The hockey school was approaching rapidly, and Sid checked his mailbox at the rink every time he was in the building, because he was getting so much crap. One day there was a package waiting for him, no return address, Homestead postmark, and familiar handwriting, and Sid was shockingly tempted to skip his workout and go right home to see what Geno had sent him.

He didn’t, but he did speed a little bit on the drive home.

Geno had sent him another pair of panties: sweet polka-dotted cotton, like something a woman would wear, and filthy with Geno’s scent. 

Sid got blindingly hard right away, but he resisted the urge to jerk off and instead opened Snapchat to send Geno a message: **Got your present**

The typing bubble popped up at once, and Sid waited, dick throbbing, to see what Geno would have to say. **where are you?**

**Just got home** , Sid replied.

**please let me see** , Geno sent, to Sid’s considerable surprise. **I know you don’t want to show your face. but please get online and let me see your cock. I need it so bad**

God. He had been thinking about it, of course he had, turning on his camera and letting Geno watch him. He had thought about how to position his laptop so Geno couldn’t see his face. But he’d thought that was _his_ fantasy, and not one Geno shared.

**Okay** , he typed, mouth dry, and took his laptop upstairs.

He checked the angle of the screen about fifteen times before he was satisfied that he could sit on the bed without Geno seeing anything above his shoulders. Then, heart racing, he signed on. 

Geno had set the per-minute rate to the minimum, well under a dollar a minute, and Sid rolled his eyes, because Geno had to know by now that money wasn’t an issue. He clicked the button to agree to the rate.

Then Geno was there, shirtless, so close to the camera that Sid knew he was sitting right there at his computer. His face was flushed. “Grinder,” he said, a little breathless.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Sid said, and exhaled, and turned on his camera.

“Oh my God,” Geno said.

Sid sat perched on the edge of the bed, legs spread wide to show Geno his hard dick, the knot already swelling at the base. “Hi,” he said.

“You look so good,” Geno said. He sat back in his chair. His shoulder started moving rhythmically. He was jerking off. “Are those my panties?”

Sid fumbled them off the mattress and showed them to Geno, clutched in one hand. “Yeah. I’ve got them right here.”

“Holy shit,” Geno said. “Oh my God. Hold on, I need to—” He stood up, and when he moved away from the camera, Sid could see a dildo suction-cupped to the headboard. 

“Fuck, _Geno_ —”

“That’s not my name,” Geno said. He shoved down his shorts and stepped out of them. “I told you. It’s a fake name for streaming.”

“Zhenya,” Sid said. Zhenya. That was Zhenya’s hard cock, that was Zhenya climbing onto the bed and reaching back to shove his fingers in his ass. That was Zhenya working himself back onto the dildo, mouth open, dick hanging heavy between his legs.

“Let me see, come on,” Zhenya said. He was so pink, like he was already close to orgasm.

Sid brought the panties to his face and breathed in, and then reached down to give his balls a gentle squeeze. “You’re going to come like that, aren’t you. Just from fucking yourself.”

“Yeah,” Zhenya said, rocking back against the dildo, his head raised to stare intently at the computer screen. “Oh, God, your dick’s so big, your knot is so fat, I want to—I want you to come in me, knock me up—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sid ground out, his cock twitching dangerously in his hand. 

“You like that,” Zhenya said, moving faster. 

Of course he fucking liked it, thinking of Geno—of Zhenya pregnant, with _his_ baby. Sid had instincts, and every single one of them liked that idea. “You can’t.”

“Why can’t I talk about it?” Zhenya asked. “It’s just words. It’s not real.” He pushed back hard and moved his hips in tight circles, grinding. His eyebrows kept drawing together in quick twitches, the way they did when he was really close.

“God,” Sid said, and he let himself go for it, working his dick hard and tight and watching Zhenya squirming around on the dildo until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. His face was hot. He let his head fall back.

“Come on, good, come on,” Zhenya was saying.

Sid wrapped the panties around his dick for the last couple of strokes, the fabric catching deliciously at his foreskin, and shot his load into the soft cotton, mixing his scent with Zhenya’s.

“Ah, oh God!” Zhenya cried out, and Sid opened his eyes in time to see Zhenya’s hips jerking as his cock spurted onto the sheets.

Sid wanted nothing more than to flop down on the bed and catch his breath, but he couldn’t risk it. He carefully wiped off his dick with a relatively clean corner of the panties and dropped them on the floor, and watched hungrily as Zhenya fucked himself through his orgasm and then kept going, wringing a few weak spurts of come from his softening dick, making himself tremble and shudder.

“I wonder if I could make you come like that on my dick,” Sid said.

Zhenya laughed shakily and pulled off at last, crawling forward to collapse on his belly at the foot of the bed. “I think it would be pretty easy for you.”

Sid thought about it all the time. He wanted to fuck Zhenya through one orgasm and into the next, maybe make him come again while he was locked around Sid’s knot. He wanted—

“Send me those panties,” Zhenya said. He cradled his head in his folded arms. Sid couldn’t see much of his face but a single watchful eye.

“I—you want them?”

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. “Smell you.”

“Okay,” Sid said. “Send me an address.”

Zhenya’s eye creased as he smiled, hidden from view. “Okay.”

\+ + +

Sid sent him the panties, and also a shirt he wore for a particularly sweaty workout, unwashed. He went to the post office with the taped-up box and felt like surely everyone could tell what he was doing, could smell the scent-rich clothes he was shipping across international borders and time zones. But the only looks he got were the familiar fond looks of people who recognized him but wanted to brag to their friends that they had respected his privacy by leaving him alone.

The address Zhenya had sent him wasn’t a PO box or a UPS store. It was a house in Homestead, and Sid had looked it up on the map, feeling desperately creepy but also desperate to know. It was a nice, unremarkable house, three stories, with a tiny but well-kept front yard. A couple of chairs sat on the front porch. Homestead had in general seen better days, and the house directly next door was pretty run-down, but this house was immaculate. Someone who lived there took pride in their home. 

Zhenya had mentioned that he had the top floor to himself, a big bedroom and a washroom where he could stream in privacy. Sid stared for a long time at the attic window, thinking of Zhenya sleeping there, Zhenya talking to Sid there. Sid could even drive by, once he was back in Pittsburgh. It was only half an hour from his house.

He flushed hot with embarrassment when he realized the direction his thoughts had taken him. He wouldn’t ever do that. He wasn’t _that_ fucking creepy. Zhenya had trusted him with his actual home address, and Sid didn’t want to ever do anything that would make Zhenya regret that decision.

**Look for a package tomorrow** , he messaged Zhenya when he got home from the post office. He had paid for overnight shipping.

**so soon!! :D**

He and Zhenya had already set up a time to chat the following evening, and when Sid logged on, Zhenya was sprawled out on his back, propped up on his elbows, wearing Sid’s T-shirt.

Sid’s stomach clenched. “I, uh. I didn’t expect you to put that on.”

“It smells so good,” Zhenya said, his voice low and rough. He tugged up the hem to show Sid his cock, thick and hard and leaking onto his belly. “I didn’t know you smelled like this.”

“Like what?” Sid asked. He stepped around the side of the coffee table, where the laptop was set up, and pulled his shirt over his head. They were clearly careening straight toward the sex this time. 

“Like everything,” Zhenya said, “like you’re everything I want,” and he palmed his cock and added, “Get naked, I want to see you.” He looked pretty out of it, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded, his expression blank and dazed like it typically wasn’t until much further into things. Maybe it was the T-shirt, and as soon as the thought occurred to Sid he decided he really, really hoped Zhenya was spacing out to that extent on his smell.

Sid stepped out of his shorts and turned the laptop around to face him, careful to keep his head out of the webcam’s sightline. His dick was filling, and he cupped it in his hand and turned slightly to the side to show Zhenya how it was lifting and lengthening. “What do you want to see?”

“Fuck, you’re hot,” Zhenya breathed. He scooted further up the bed so he could lean against the headboard and get his hands on his cock. “Turn around.”

Sid laughed. “Oh yeah? You want the rear view?” He rotated in a slow circle. He never thought much about his body—it did what he needed it to, and that was all he really cared about—but he’d been in locker rooms for long enough to know that his ass would probably get a reaction out of Zhenya.

Sure enough, Zhenya said something harsh in Russian, and Sid froze where he was, his back to the camera. “Grinder,” Zhenya said, strangled.

Sid grinned. “Something wrong?”

Zhenya made an aggrieved noise. “How! It’s not fair, you’re too perfect—you’re _huge_ , your back—”

“My back?” Sid asked, amused. “That’s what you’re looking at?”

“If I look at your ass I’ll go blind,” Zhenya said. “Fuck! I can’t believe this.” He inhaled sharply, and Sid turned back around, and—sure enough, Zhenya had his fingers in his ass.

“Starting without me, eh?” Sid asked.

“You like when I get off,” Zhenya accused, pushing in deeper. “You like that I want you.”

Sid couldn’t deny it and didn’t really see any reason to. “Yeah. I really do.”

“God.” The tendons on the back of Zhenya’s hand flexed as he worked his fingers. “You ever do this? Finger yourself?”

Sid curled one hand around his dick. His knot wasn’t up yet, but the skin at the base was starting to feel tender, ready to swell. “Sometimes, yeah. I like it, but I definitely don’t like it as much as you do.”

Zhenya huffed. “I like it too much, maybe.” He watched Sid for a moment, and a lot of the time Sid really had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth next, which was unnerving but also exciting. “Will you do it for me now?”

“Uh, finger myself?” Sid asked. He definitely hadn’t expected that.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said. “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

“It’s fine,” Sid said. “I can do that.” He had been honest with Zhenya: it wasn’t his favorite thing, but he _did_ like it, and he liked the idea of Zhenya watching him, of being vulnerable in a way that alphas weren’t supposed to be, or whatever. Sid had never paid much attention to what was expected of him in that way.

He was too lazy to go upstairs for the lube, but he had Vaseline in a drawer in the kitchen, and that worked fine. He knelt backwards on the couch, one hand gripping the back and the other between his legs, two fingers pressed carefully inside. Zhenya’s vocal, explicit appreciation felt better than his fingers did, and Sid rode his hand until he had to pull his fingers out and stroke his cock a few times to bring himself over.

He slumped on the couch afterward, relaxed and sleepy, and watched Zhenya thrash around on the bed. “Don’t hurt yourself,” he said, amused, as Zhenya frantically rocked his hips between the fingers in his ass and the hand on his cock, red-faced and swearing.

“Fuck you,” Zhenya spat, “fuck, fuck, _oh_ ,” and his back arched as he finally came.

They talked for a while. Zhenya was smiley, sweet and pink-cheeked, repeatedly tugging up the collar of Sid’s shirt to smell it. Sid had never seen him behave like this. It was incredibly appealing.

“You’re acting like you’re on drugs,” he said.

Zhenya laughed and rolled over onto his back. “What do you know about drugs? You’re too good. I bet you’ve never even smoked pot.”

“Sucks to be you, I definitely have,” Sid said. Only once, when he was in juniors, to get his teammates to shut up about it, but Zhenya didn’t need to know that.

“I don’t believe you,” Zhenya said. He pulled up the hem of the shirt to cover his face, exposing the long expanse of his belly. “You smell so good. Send me another shirt.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Sid said fondly.

“It’s not shit,” Zhenya insisted, yanking the shirt back into place. “Send me.”

“Okay, I hear you,” Sid said, grinning at the petulant look Zhenya gave him. “I’ll send you anything you want.”

“Good,” Zhenya said, smiling again, happy now that he’d gotten his way. He jammed a pillow beneath his head and wiggled his toes.

Sid watched him for a moment, half-naked and lanky. “How did you, uh. Get into camming?”

“Hmm,” Zhenya said. He flexed his feet toward the camera. “You sure you want to talk about this?”

“I know you do it, it’s not like it’s a surprise,” Sid said. “I know you’re still streaming all the time.” ‘Still,’ like anything had changed to put Zhenya’s streaming in question. Like Sid had or wanted any say over what Zhenya did. He knew as soon as he said it that he had revealed too much of his own thoughts about their—whatever they were doing.

But things _had_ changed between them. It was stupid to pretend they hadn’t.

“Yeah,” Zhenya said, and shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not too interesting. I like sex, I don’t care about being naked. I read some article about camming and I thought, that doesn’t seem so hard. So then I tried it, and I made, like, fifty bucks my first night.” He grinned. “I thought I was _rich_.”

“How long have you been doing it?” Sid asked.

“Little more than a year,” Zhenya said. “I started last summer. Why are you asking me all these questions? You want to get into camming?”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” Sid said.

“You’re jealous? You want me to stop?”

There it was, out in the open. “No,” Sid said. He brought up his hands to cover his face, even though Zhenya couldn’t see him. “Look, I won’t pretend that I don’t feel, uh. I definitely—there are some feelings. And if you wanted to stop—I mean, I’d give you anything. You’ve probably figured that out by now. If you wanted to quit tomorrow, I’d pay your tuition—”

“No,” Zhenya said immediately, scowling.

“I said _if_ ,” Sid said. “I know you won’t let me, you’re too fucking stubborn.”

“It’s not _stubborn_ ,” Zhenya said. “I can work, I can make my own money! I don’t need you to take care—”

“I know you don’t,” Sid said, exasperated. “I’m not offering! I’m just trying to explain myself. You should do whatever you want. If you want to drop out of school and spend the rest of your life eating bon-bons, I’m all for it. But I think you would get really bored.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have brought this up.”

“Maybe not,” Zhenya said. He tugged up the collar again, hiding the lower half of his face. “You’re not jealous?”

“I’m a little jealous,” Sid admitted. “But I feel like an asshole about it. I won’t give you a hard time.”

“Jealous,” Zhenya said quietly to himself. He lowered the collar to just below his chin. He was smiling.

\+ + +

Sid woke up the next morning to a message from Zhenya consisting of a series of emojis: hearts, blushing smiley faces, and a few peaches.

Sid felt his chest squeeze tight. He spent a few moments considering his reply. In the end, he sent his own blushing smiley face and a double pink heart.

Everything was different after that. Not dramatically, but Sid had confessed to—well, to _something_ , at any rate, and they both knew it. He realized after a few days that Zhenya had stopped sending him the filthy snaps he sent around to his regulars. Instead, Sid got sweet good-morning and good-night snaps, usually selfies, liberally decorated with stickers and emojis. Zhenya stopped sending him filthy snaps at all. Pictures of recognizable Pittsburgh landmarks started to filter in. Sometimes there were pictures of Zhenya’s friends, when before he had existed in a vacuum. But Zhenya was as dirty and enthusiastic as ever when they video chatted, and Sid tentatively, hopefully decided to take the changes as a good sign. 

His hockey school started not long after, and he was busy and all day and tired by the end of it. The kids were great but exhausting, and he dragged himself home in the evenings to make dinner and collapse in front of the TV. He and Zhenya had scheduled a chat for the third night of the camp, and Sid felt worn out enough that he messaged Zhenya from his car before he drove home: **Pretty tired tonight, maybe we should reschedule**

Zhenya had replied by the time Sid got home. **we can just talk :) I’d like to see you but no pressure!**

That was exactly what Sid wanted. He didn’t feel like getting off, but he really wanted to see Zhenya’s face and listen to him talk about his day. But sex was the rickety framework supporting everything else they did, and if nobody was getting off, then they were just hanging out because they enjoyed each other’s company, and that seemed—unwise. At least for Sid’s emotional self-control. 

He didn’t respond to Zhenya right away. He prepped some chicken breasts for dinner and got them in the oven. He could easily reschedule with Zhenya and spend his evening watching a movie, but his desire to see Zhenya’s smile and talk with him at least for a few minutes grew stronger and stronger as he waited for the chicken to bake, until finally he privately admitted defeat and messaged Zhenya: **Yeah, if you’re okay with that, I’d still like to talk**

**of course!! can’t wait :)**

Sid taped over his webcam before he logged on. He was slouched in bed with his knees bent and the laptop propped on his thighs, and there was no way to keep Zhenya from seeing his face in that position. He wanted to be close, and see every flicker of Zhenya’s expression.

Zhenya was smiling when Sid logged on, looking warm and a little rumpled in his own bed, probably lying in about the same position Sid was in. Sid could see the pillows and headboard behind him, and his face filled the screen. The footage was grainier than usual. He was on his laptop.

“I don’t get to see you tonight?” Zhenya asked, his smile fading.

“I’m in bed,” Sid said, “so I don’t, uh. The angle isn’t good. I just want to—is that okay? I just want to look at you.”

Zhenya’s smile returned, sweet and small. “Yeah, of course it’s okay. You had a long day, huh?”

“Busy week,” Sid said. “I’m doing, uh—kind of a special thing for work. It’s good, but. A lot of long days.”

“Old man, always tired,” Zhenya teased.

“That’s me,” Sid said. Zhenya kept hinting around trying to get Sid to tell him how old he was, and Sid refused to take the bait. “How was your internship today?”

Zhenya brightened. “It’s good! We got a new patient who had the same knee injury I did, so that was interesting.” He talked for a while about the patients he worked with and the PT who was training him. He never used names, and was vague about the non-medical details, but Sid had listened to his stories for long enough to recognize some of the patients, and Zhenya’s pride in their progress was always clear.

“You’ll be a great PT,” he said, when Zhenya wound down.

Zhenya made a face. “I hope so. I have to finish my bachelor’s first, you know?”

“You’ll get into PT school,” Sid said. “Your supervisor loves you. She’s going to write you a great recommendation letter. She’s giving you so much responsibility.”

“It’s just easy stuff,” Zhenya said. “Show the patients where the elliptical is, spray down the mats.”

“You’ll be great at it,” Sid said firmly. “You care about the patients. You want to help them. I wouldn’t bullshit you about this.”

Zhenya glanced down. “Thanks, grinder,” he said, his voice soft.

“You’re welcome,” Sid said. Zhenya was so bold about some things and so uncertain about others, and every glimpse of vulnerability made Sid feel so powerfully tender that it frightened him, a little. They were so far off the map now. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, uh.”

“Can you tell me about your busy week?” Zhenya asked.

He couldn’t really, because a hockey school was too specific, even if he fudged a lot of the details. “It’s not that exciting. Just, you know. Work.”

“Okay,” Zhenya said. He rubbed at his forehead. “You, ah. Can I say something?”

“Uh, I guess so,” Sid said, his stomach sinking.

“I know you’re—important,” Zhenya said. “Definitely rich, and I think maybe you’re famous, too. Maybe in politics, I don’t know. I know you don’t want to show your face. But—” He stopped, and drew a deep breath. “I’d like to see you. I wish I knew what you look like.”

Sid exhaled slowly. “Yeah. I’ve, uh. I’ve been thinking about it, actually.” Every day since the first time he turned on his camera. “But it’s—I’m not in politics. But. It would be a bad idea for me. But I’m thinking about it anyway.”

Zhenya slouched down further and drew the collar of his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose, and Sid realized with a jolt that Zhenya was wearing his shirt again.

“Zhenya,” Sid choked out.

Zhenya ducked his head down, his gaze dropping away. His cheeks lifted, his eyes crinkling. He was smiling.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Sid said. Because he did, he trusted Zhenya a lot, probably way more than he should have. 

“Okay,” Zhenya said. He let go of the collar, and his face reappeared, stamped with a warm expression that made Sid’s ears and neck flush hot. “Grinder, um. Maybe when we talk, we could do it some other way. Not through this site. Do you have a Mac? Maybe we could use FaceTime.”

“I’m not, uh. I’m not totally sure what you’re getting at,” Sid said carefully.

Zhenya scowled. “I don’t want you to pay me! Okay? I don’t want to—” He broke off, and shook his head. “That’s how I feel. I just want to talk to you. I don’t want it to be about money anymore.” He looked away, grimacing and rubbing at his cheek.

Sid’s heart thudded against his ribs. He had hoped, of course, but to hear Zhenya say it was shockingly affecting. “I don’t care about the money.”

“Yeah, I know,” Zhenya said, still looking away from the camera. “For you it’s nothing, you don’t care. But for me it’s—if you’re paying me, then we’re not. Then you’re a client. And I don’t want you to be my client anymore.”

Sid couldn’t breathe. He felt like his lungs had collapsed. “What do you want me to be?”

“You know,” Zhenya said softly. He shot a quick glance at Sid before he turned his head away again. “I don’t know. I don’t know, okay? It’s hard. But I don’t want your money.”

“Okay,” Sid said. “I hear you. But just for the record, I like taking care of you. It makes me feel, uh. Good. That I can do that.”

Zhenya looked at him finally. His expression was serious, his dark eyes fixed on his webcam. “We can talk about it again in a couple months, maybe. Okay? But right now I don’t want any of your money.” He ran his hands over his face. “I mean. If you want that. I don’t know.”

“I want to pay your tuition and take care of you forever,” Sid said, the admission bursting out of him. “I want you to be—mine, okay, I feel pretty, uh. Possessive.” He wasn’t proud of it, but receiving that jersey with Zhenya’s scent on it had sealed the matter for him. All of his instincts urged him to claim Zhenya as his. He couldn’t, he knew it was impossible, but logic didn’t matter here. His longing was savage.

“Good,” Zhenya said fiercely, and then laughed a little and put his hand over his face again. “It’s stupid, I know. I tell myself it’s stupid. But I still want, uh.”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “Me too, okay? I get it. You’re really—I think about you a lot. I want to keep doing this. Talking to you. So I guess let’s just keep doing that and see what happens. I’m not in a rush.”

“Okay,” Zhenya said. His smile widened, and Sid felt his own smile growing in response. “So. FaceTime?”

“I think we can do that,” Sid said, and then he said Zhenya’s name, just to say it, just for the way Zhenya smiled at him.

“Hi, grinder,” Zhenya said.

“Hi,” Sid said, and had to laugh at the stupid bubbling joy inside his heart.

\+ + +

He made a new Apple ID with the same throwaway email address he’d used for Snapchat and the camming site. The next time he video chatted with Zhenya, on Saturday morning after the hockey school was over, he signed on and immediately received a call from an Evgeni Malkin, and he was already grinning when Zhenya’s face appeared on the screen.

“What?” Zhenya asked, grinning himself, like he could sense Sid’s smile even without seeing it. He looked like he had just woken up: still in bed, shirtless, rubbing at his eyes. Sid felt like he was discovering a new secret thing about life that he had somehow never known before, hidden there in Zhenya’s smile.

“Nothing,” Sid said. “I’m happy to see you.” They had snapped in the mornings, but never actually talked, and there was something about hearing the sleep-rough burr to Zhenya’s voice that made Sid’s belly feel soft and molten.

“You look too awake,” Zhenya said, squinting, taking in Sid’s T-shirt and the coffee mug he was cradling against his chest.

“I’m an hour ahead of you,” Sid said. “And you love to sleep in.”

“Mm, sleep’s so nice,” Zhenya said. He rolled onto his back and stretched. Sid’s eyes tracked the arch of his back, the flex of the muscles in his arms and shoulders. He’d had a long week, but he wasn’t tired now.

“You look really good,” Sid said, a little hoarse.

Zhenya grinned and reached down to run his thumbnail over one of his nipples. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sid said, and watched as Zhenya slid his other hand down his belly and into his boxers.

“You get off and let me watch,” Zhenya said. “Show me your dick.”

Sid scrambled to obey.

When they were done, and Zhenya was curled in a sunbeam like a lazy cat, Sid said, “When can we talk again?”

“I’m streaming tonight,” Zhenya said, “but tomorrow?”

“I can’t wait,” Sid said, and he really couldn’t.

Everything was different. Sid drifted through his final two weeks in Nova Scotia, lighter than air, floating on Zhenya’s reciprocation of his feelings. He couldn’t stop smiling. Every time his phone buzzed in his pocket, he got a sweet kick of endorphins. Zhenya became his go-to person, the one he messaged about the small frustrations and delights of daily life, traffic snafus and evenings on the dock with Taylor—the person he wanted to tell those things to.

Other people noticed. “Are you sure you didn’t start screwing someone?” Nate asked him suspiciously, when they were out for lunch after a workout.

“I’m sure,” Sid said. It wasn’t even a lie. He and Zhenya weren’t technically screwing.

“You’re definitely lying, but whatever,” Nate said, and took another huge bite of his sandwich.

“I’m screwing your mom,” Sid said, which was really immature, just to make Nate scowl and kick at him beneath the table.

Sid never paid much attention to what Nate thought, but his mom brought it up, too, when he went to his parents’ house for dinner one evening. He helped his mom with the dishes afterward, and she gave him a sideways look and said, “Are you, ah. Seeing someone?”

That was a more difficult question to answer than Nate’s had been. He and Zhenya hadn’t made any promises, hadn’t even really talked explicitly about what they were doing or what it meant, but Sid knew what he wanted it to mean.

“Well,” his mom said, smiling, when he took too long to answer.

“Mom, come on, nothing’s going on,” he said. “I’d tell you if there were anything worth knowing about.” His last serious relationship had been with another alpha, and his parents had been confused but accepting; but he wasn’t sure how they would feel about a camboy a decade Sid’s junior. He wasn’t ready to get into it, not before he and Zhenya were more official.

“If you say so,” she said, still smiling.

Sid decided to let it go.

“My dad thinks I have a boyfriend,” Zhenya said to him, aggrieved, the next time they FaceTimed. Sid was leaving for Vail in the morning, and then heading back to Pittsburgh from there, and he was folding clothes, but he turned to look at Zhenya’s expression. Zhenya had his nose all wrinkled up: a little perturbed, but acting cute about it. He was wearing another shirt Sid had sent him, and it was wreaking havoc on Sid’s libido and emotions.

“What did you tell him?” Sid asked, real cool, like he didn’t care either way about the answer.

Zhenya smirked. “I told him I’m working on it.”

Sid had to laugh. “Good answer.”

The approaching start of the season made everything seem more real. Zhenya had been his summer idyll, but now he was returning to Pittsburgh and real life. He knew by now that Zhenya was a student at Pitt, and Sid couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be for them to meet—ridiculously easy, serendipitously easy. He could give Zhenya his address and have him panting in his bed in under an hour. He had some pretty satisfying orgasms over that fantasy—Zhenya naked and aroused in a bed that smelled like Sid, Zhenya wet and begging for it—but the reality of it was still too frightening. Zhenya hadn’t said another word about Sid showing his face, but the possibility of it hung between them every time they spoke. Sid knew he had to make some sort of decision.

He was back in Pittsburgh by the first week of September, for media stuff and some informal workouts before training camp began. Zhenya had started classes at the end of August, his junior year, and they were both busier than they had been over the summer, but their communication didn’t drop off at all. Sid started keeping his phone at his stall in the locker room, instead of in the change room, so he could message Zhenya as soon as he got off the ice.

“Someone finally teach you how to use your phone?” Phil asked him, and smacked his gloves against Sid’s knees in passing.

“You’re the least funny person on this team,” Sid said, and Phil grinned and said, “That’s probably true.”

**A+ on my first microbio quiz :)** Zhenya had messaged him.

Sid sent, **When do I get to start calling you doctor?**

**tonight ;)**

The first week of the preseason, they FaceTimed one evening while Sid was prepping dinner, because Zhenya was going to stream later that night. Sid was chopping onions with a quarter of his attention and listening to Zhenya with the rest of it, but he set down his knife and looked over at his tablet when Zhenya said, “One of my friends is trying to get me to go to a Pens game this season, and I want to go with him, but tickets are so expensive, you know?”

“Uh. Are they?” Sid asked. He honestly had very little idea of how much tickets cost.

Zhenya nodded. “Like seventy bucks, if you want decent seats. There’s student rush, but I’m too busy, I can’t do last minute. And I don’t want to be up too high, you know? I want to see what’s happening on the ice.” He grinned. “See Crosby.”

Jesus. Sid drew a breath. “What are you doing next Wednesday night?”

Zhenya narrowed his eyes. “Studying, maybe? Why?”

“There’s a preseason game,” Sid said. “I’ll get you tickets.”

“ _No_ ,” Zhenya said. “Grinder—”

“Come on, let me do this for you,” Sid said. “I’ll get you two tickets. It’ll be fun. Belated birthday present, eh? It’s not that much money. It’s just the preseason.”

Zhenya scowled. He was wavering, Sid could tell. He had never been to a Pens game, and Sid knew he really wanted to go, and was banking on the temptation being too powerful to resist.

“Grinder,” Zhenya said, his voice and expression pained, and Sid grinned, because Zhenya was clearly admitting defeat.

“You can pick up the tickets at will call,” he said. “Send me a selfie.”

\+ + +

He got in touch with the front office and had them set aside two tickets, good seats right near the blue line, across from the benches. He thought about putting Zhenya behind the bench, but the view was shitty there, and also he would be distracted for the entire game; and it was only the preseason, but Sid still wanted to win.

He was distracted the entire day before the game, all through tape review and lunch and his nap, but the force of long habit settled him as he drove to the arena in the evening. He had routines for a reason. He made his sandwich and taped his sticks and played some two-touch, and his heartrate only ratcheted up again when he went out on the ice for warmups and saw Zhenya there standing by the glass, wearing the Crosby jersey Sid had sent him.

The world narrowed down to that single bright point: Zhenya grinning, talking with the friend standing beside him, some guy Sid could barely bother to take note of. 

Zhenya was real: a real person in Sid’s world.

He went through his warmup routine on autopilot. Zhenya had his phone up, taking pictures or video, and Sid wondered how many snaps he would find waiting for him when he checked his own phone after the game. 

Zhenya was laughing, his head turned to the side, his smile huge and white.

Sid’s hands held his stick, his skates held his feet, he cut lines through the ice as always. Everything was different. Zhenya was there.

The Penguins won, 5-4. Sid scored an even-handed goal in the second, and after he hugged Shearsy and Guentzy, he looked toward Zhenya’s seat. Everyone was on their feet, and there was no way to spot him in the crowd, but Sid knew he was there, watching.

He would be Sid’s, if Sid wanted him—if Sid took the risk and asked for it. 

In the locker room after the game, he unlocked his phone and read through his messages from Zhenya, as abundant and enthusiastic as he had expected. **I saw Crosby!!! you jealous?? ;)** and **Pens won!!! the best game!!!!!** He had snapped a few selfies, and a few pictures of the team on the ice during warmups. Sid recognized himself from behind in one of them, and Zhenya—the troll—had drawn a giant heart over Sid’s head.

Sid screenshotted that one. Zhenya would think it was a joke. **Looked like a good game, glad you had fun**

**so much fun!!! I’ll be home soon, maybe we can chat ;)**

**Absolutely** , Sid replied, and hastened to finish stripping out of his gear. 

By the time he got home and changed out of his suit, Zhenya had messaged him that he was home, too. Sid stripped down to bare skin and called Zhenya from bed, with his tablet propped on the nightstand. The game had gone well, Zhenya was happy, and Sid was looking forward to getting off.

But Zhenya, when he answered the call, was disappointingly fully clothed, and sitting cross-legged on the bed wearing sweatpants and one of Sid’s shirts. The jersey was nowhere in sight. He was grinning, his dark eyes bright with excitement. “Grinder! You watched the game? Did you see me on TV? I don’t know if I was on TV, but maybe. Did you see the Pens won? I saw Crosby score! It was right there in front me. Did you know the arena is cold?”

“Whoa, slow down,” Sid said, laughing. Zhenya was as keyed up as he’d been during heat. “Yeah, I watched the game. You had a great time, eh?”

“It was the best,” Zhenya said, and gave Sid the entire recap, from their arrival at the arena to their triumphant departure with the rest of the thrilled crowd. He had a lot of insightful thoughts about the power play and the offense in general, and Sid listened to him chatter on without interrupting, happy to bask in Zhenya’s happiness.

If he told Zhenya, he could come home after a game and lie in bed with Zhenya in the flesh, unmediated by a tablet or laptop screen. He could hold Zhenya in his arms and kiss him and listen to him talk about Phil’s one-timer. They could be together.

“Grinder?” Zhenya said.

“Sorry,” Sid said. “I zoned out. Long day. What were you saying?”

“You’re already getting tired of me,” Zhenya said teasingly. He lifted the collar of the shirt to his nose.

“Can I ask you something?” Sid said.

Zhenya frowned at him. “Of course.”

“Would you ever want to meet me?” Sid asked. His blood beat hard through his body. “In real life.”

“Then I’d know who you are,” Zhenya said.

“Yeah,” Sid said. “If I told you. Would you want to meet me?”

Zhenya looked at him for a moment, solemn. Sid had that same cliff-edge feeling of being totally unsure what Zhenya would say next. “Do I want to meet you? I think every day about kissing you. I want to smell right behind your ear, where the scent’s strongest. I want to know how you smell. I want to suck your dick, oh, God, I think about it so much. I want to go through heat with you, and I want to take you to dinner, and maybe we’ll go up the Incline together and take pictures at the top, so I can show my friends. I want you to meet my dog. Okay? That’s what I want.”

“So, uh,” Sid said. “That’s a yes?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said, and laughed, and shook his head. “Yeah. I want to meet you.”

\+ + +

Sid gave himself a few days to think about it, just to be sure he wasn’t acting on impulse. He wasn’t. He wanted Zhenya to know. He wanted to know what would happen next, as terrifying and uncertain as it was. Maybe it would be good. Maybe he would get to do all of those things Zhenya wanted. Maybe they would take a selfie at the top of the Incline and send it to everyone they knew. Not right away, maybe not even any time soon, but—someday.

He wanted everything.

Their final preseason game was a shutout loss to Columbus. Sid went home frustrated and annoyed, and almost ignored the message from Zhenya asking if he wanted to FaceTime. He wasn’t good company. But talking to Zhenya always made him feel better, and in the end he messaged Zhenya and said, **Kind of grouchy tonight but I’d still like to see you if you’re okay with that**

**I’ll cheer you up :)**

Sid smiled foolishly at his phone. He was nervous, still, but—God, it would be so worth it, if it went well. 

He sat on the bed and opened FaceTime on his laptop. The call connected. There was Zhenya, his sweet familiar face, the curve of his mouth, the sleepy droop of his eyes. 

“Hey,” Sid said. It came out a little raw. His throat was tight with unexpected emotion.

“Bad day?” Zhenya asked, smiling at him, hugging his knees to his chest.

“Better now,” Sid said. “Hey, uh, Zhenya, can I—there’s something I want to tell you.”

Zhenya went carefully still. “Oh?”

Sid licked his lips. He had thought of a few things to say, but—maybe this didn’t need words. He took a breath. His heart was racing. He could still turn back. 

He didn’t. He tilted the screen of his laptop until the camera caught his face.

“Holy shit,” Zhenya whispered, his eyes wide.

Sid waited, his heart pounding in his chest. After a moment, Zhenya began to smile. 

“So, uh,” Sid said.

“Hi,” Zhenya said, smiling so hard. “Hi, Sid.”


	2. Epilogue

Three days later, Sid drove downtown in the morning and parked in the deck at the arena. He had gotten up early, too excited to sleep, and he was a nervous, over-eager mess the whole way into the city, his heart racing like he’d drunk too much coffee. He sat in his car for a few minutes after he parked and took some deep, calming breaths that didn’t help all that much.

His phone buzzed. **I’m here, where are you?? I’m in the wrong place??? :(**

Sid dragged in another unsteady breath. He was grinning and couldn’t stop. **Running late, sorry. Give me five minutes**. After a moment of hesitation, he added a heart.

Zhenya was waiting for him in the lobby off Centre. Sid came around the back way from the garage and saw Zhenya before Zhenya saw him, and stopped where he was, lingering in the corridor, watching Zhenya from behind. Zhenya was more dressed up than Sid had ever seen him, nice slacks and a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and Sid probably hadn’t been this happy since the last time he won the Cup. 

He moved forward. His shoes squeaked on the polished floor, and Zhenya turned at the sound and saw him and bit down on his lip, and then gave up and let the smile spread across his face, as big as Sid’s own smile.

“Hi, Zhenya.” Sid’s heart slammed against his ribs. God, Zhenya was so tall. Seeing him at the game hadn’t driven it home the way standing before him did. He had at least four inches on Sid, maybe more.

Zhenya rocked back on his heels and ran a hand through his hair. “Shit. You’re real.”

“I’m real,” Sid said. He swallowed, and offered his hand. They had talked about this, what they would do, how they would greet each other this first time, and they had agreed on a handshake. It seemed inadequate now, but Sid didn’t want to change things up on Zhenya without talking about it.

Zhenya took his hand. He didn’t shake it. He held it, his long fingers curling around Sid’s. Sid knew his face so well after months of video chatting, but now he was learning all the layers of nuance that the computer blurred out, the texture of Zhenya’s skin, the soft curl to his hair, the way he smelled, like he had doused himself in half a bottle of cologne.

They stood there in the lobby, hand in hand, beaming at each other.

Sid finally drew away. “Do you, uh. Still want that tour?”

“Yeah, okay,” Zhenya said. He was slightly flushed. Maybe it was a good thing he’d gone overboard with the cologne; if Sid could smell _him_ , the actual unmasked scent of him, he might not be able to control himself.

It was surreal to take Zhenya down to the service level and give him the same tour he’d given to countless friends and relatives over the years: the trainers’ room, the stick room. There wasn’t a game that evening, so the whole place was pretty deserted. They saw a cleaning lady, and one of the equipment guys doing some inventory stuff, but neither of them asked any questions, only smiled and said good morning. Sid could probably drag a corpse through the locker room and nobody would question him.

“This is where you are every day, before a game,” Zhenya said, when Sid showed him the kitchen in the lounge.

“Yeah.” Sid patted the countertop. “Make my sandwich right here.”

“Now I can imagine it,” Zhenya said, smiling, his hands in his pockets. He had been blushing continuously for the past fifteen minutes.

Sid wasn’t any better. After months of talking, months of thinking about Zhenya and growing to know him and care for him, this was finally happening. Zhenya let Sid give his spiel and didn’t say much, but he watched Sid’s face and smiled the whole time, and Sid knew they were both running on hormones and infatuation, but he didn’t care. He was over the moon. Zhenya wanted to be his. 

The locker room was their last stop. Sid unlocked the door with his swipe card and ushered Zhenya in with a cautious hand on his lower back. Zhenya shot him a look but didn’t shake him off, and ducked his head a little, baring the back of his neck. The back of Sid’s own neck flushed hot, and he moved his hand to hook his fingers in Zhenya’s waistband, right above the swell of his ass, for just a second before he let go.

“Show me your stuff,” Zhenya said, smiling, head still down. He glanced sidelong at Sid. He was so goddamn pink.

“My gear,” Sid said, just to clarify, because ‘stuff’ could cover a lot of ground.

Zhenya’s smile turned a little sly. “Yeah, what else would I mean?”

He was so much trouble. “Can’t imagine,” Sid said dryly.

He sat at his stall while Zhenya inspected his helmet and shin guards, really taking his time, like there was anything interesting about Sid’s pads. Sid didn’t interfere. Zhenya stood so close that his crotch was basically right there in Sid’s face. There was less cologne at this level, and more of—maybe—maybe that was—

“Zhenya,” Sid said, and he could hear how raw his voice was, “are you wet?”

Zhenya’s face flamed scarlet. His eyes darted to Sid’s face and then away. Without saying anything, he returned Sid’s shin guards to their shelf. 

Sid’s pulse thundered in his ears. He thought he had probably crossed a line, and he opened his mouth to apologize. But then, moving slowly, Zhenya knelt on the bench, straddling Sid’s lap, and sat on Sid’s thighs.

“Zhenya,” Sid croaked out, his hands going to Zhenya’s hips to steady him. Zhenya was red and smirking and he ducked his head to nose behind Sid’s ear, smelling him, and Sid closed his eyes and dragged him in, settling Zhenya’s pelvis right against his own, the bulge of Zhenya’s dick against his through their pants, both of them starting to take an interest.

“You smell so good,” Zhenya whispered, his lips against the tender skin behind Sid’s earlobe. Sid shivered and turned his head and Zhenya kissed him then, dry and a little tentative, their first kiss. 

Zhenya drew back and met Sid’s gaze. He wasn’t smiling now. His eyebrows were drawn together, maybe a little worried. “Okay?”

Sid kissed him again, one hand on Zhenya’s jaw, guiding him into it. Zhenya opened his mouth for Sid and clung to his shoulders and kissed him, let Sid kiss him, slow and so thorough, better than any of Sid’s countless daydreams. Zhenya was warm and heavy and squirming a little in Sid’s lap, and Sid maybe wasn’t thinking totally clearly when he reached down to unbutton Zhenya’s pants.

Zhenya broke away, panting. “Sid—”

“I know,” Sid said. He dragged down Zhenya’s zipper and slipped his hand inside the fly to feel the shape of Zhenya’s cock, half-hard inside his briefs. “We can’t do anything here. But can I—let me touch you a little. That’s all.”

Zhenya groaned and hunched down to hide his face against Sid’s neck. He reached back with one hand and tried to—oh, God, tug down his pants. He wasn’t very successful, but Sid took that invitation and slid his own hand down the back of Zhenya’s pants, inside his underwear, down over the curve of his incredible ass, his fingers sliding down the crease, down to the—God—the soft, wet heat of his hole.

“You’re so wet,” Sid breathed, stroking with his fingertips. He couldn’t really reach any further, which was probably a good thing, because if he got his fingers inside he didn’t think he would be able to stop without making Zhenya come.

“You make me wet,” Zhenya said. He was sniffing behind Sid’s ear again. “Smell so good, look so good,” and then they were kissing again, open-mouthed and dirty, and Sid held him and rubbed at his hole and couldn’t remember now why they had decided to meet in public. He could have Zhenya naked in his bed right now, begging—

He broke the kiss, and rested his forehead on Zhenya’s shoulder. They had to stop.

Zhenya laughed softly. His fingers carded through Sid’s hair. “Sid. It’s you.”

“It’s me,” Sid said. Reluctantly, he extracted his hand from Zhenya’s pants and sat back. Zhenya was flushed and smiling at him, unbelievably real and here and spread wide over Sid’s lap. Without thinking, Sid brought his hand to his mouth and sucked on his fingers, tasting Zhenya’s slick.

Zhenya groaned and climbed off Sid’s lap, tugging his pants back into place and adjusting his erection, zipping himself back up. “You can’t do that.”

“Probably shouldn’t have,” Sid agreed, because now his knot was trying to go up, and it would take a long time to go back down on its own. But he wasn’t sorry.

Zhenya sidled back between his knees and leaned down to kiss him. “We’re bad. We’re supposed to talk, get to know each other, see how we feel. Not make out in your locker room.”

“You just wanted to make sure I’m not a troglodyte in real life,” Sid said. He hooked his fingers in the pockets of Zhenya’s slacks.

Zhenya laughed and kissed him again. “I don’t know. Maybe I thought it’s going to be a little awkward, you know? Maybe we won’t like each other. But it’s just you.” He sat down on the bench beside Sid and leaned against him, his head on Sid’s shoulder. Sid carefully wrapped his arm around Zhenya and held him close, filled with pride and tenderness and a big marine swell of emotion that was probably going to turn into love.

“You knew, huh?” he said. “Who I was.” Zhenya had taken the revelation of Sid’s identity way too in stride. Surely he should have been at least a _little_ perturbed.

Zhenya huffed. “Not for sure, but. It’s not a big surprise. I started to wonder with the jersey. And you knew way too much about hockey. And then you gave me that address in Halifax, so—I had an idea.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t my brightest move,” Sid said ruefully.  

“I’m glad, though,” Zhenya said. “Maybe it’s a bad surprise for me if I don’t suspect already. But I had time to think about it, what it would be like if it really was you. Like, will we have to keep it a secret, will it be hard for me since you’re so famous. You know.” 

“Next time I’ll have to be more careful about my secret identity,” Sid said. 

“You weren’t careful at all,” Zhenya said. Sid glanced down, and he was grinning. “After we started voice chatting, I watched a bunch of your interviews, and I was pretty sure it was you. But I didn’t really believe it, you know? Maybe I thought I hoped so much it was you that I was imagining things.”

“You weren’t imagining things,” Sid said. “I know voice chatting was dumb. I was already pretty gone on you by then.”

Zhenya sat up and kissed him, a sweet press of lips. “Yeah, you’re so dumb. I’m glad you’re dumb, though. Otherwise I don’t get to have you.” He kissed Sid again and stood up. “I have to go. I’ve got class later.”

“Have dinner with me,” Sid said. He wasn’t letting Zhenya leave without making plans to see him again. “I’ve got games the next two nights. Friday? I’ll take you out.”

“You better dress up for me,” Zhenya said. He tugged at the collar of Sid’s T-shirt. He was still pink. 

“I’ll wear a nice shirt,” Sid said. He was so far gone. There was no coming back from this. “I’ll take you somewhere nice.”

“Good,” Zhenya said. He smirked, possibly Sid’s favorite expression, because he looked so cocky and so pleased with himself. “Just so you know, I don’t fuck until the third date.”

Jesus. A wash of heat flooded Sid’s body. Zhenya _wanted_ him, he wanted to be in Sid’s bed as badly as Sid wanted him there, and Sid was going to get to have him, sex and all the rest of it, all the things Zhenya wanted to do together. Going up the Incline. Meeting Zhenya’s dog.

“Who says I’m gonna want a third date?” he said, and Zhenya laughed at him, bright and loud, and took Sid’s hands to haul him to his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some [small fic extras and headcanon posts](https://zhenyabest.tumblr.com/tagged/camboy-omega-geno) available on Tumblr.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Private Show](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16316264) by [momopods (momotastic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/momotastic/pseuds/momopods)




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